James Graham’s 2012 hit play This House, set in parliament in the 1970s, raised a few pertinent questions, such as, has the old-fashioned procedure inside the Palace of Westminster got any merit at all? And, have we moved on since the first women MPs had to navigate this fusty institution?
But perhaps the biggest question for fans of the play was how come the 30-year-old who wrote it was so interested and informed about the dry, cigarette-stained politics of an era before he was born? Graham quickly gained a reputation as a politics anorak, or even, as he puts, it “a dweeb”, although an entertaining one.
This weekend the playwright, now 35, is in the news for multiple reasons, not all self-inflicted. For a start, he is putting his hand into the viper’s nest of current party politics with a new West End play, Labour of Love. It has just started rehearsals with Martin Freeman, with the last-minute addition of Tamsin Greig on Friday after Sarah Lancashire had to pull out owing to ill health. It will tell the story of the ideological grievances that threaten to rip apart a political movement Graham clearly holds dear.
“I’ve tried to embrace all the contradictions,” he told the Observer. “The different forces at work are there: those who want the party to be more electable, those interested in the grassroots, as well as those who want to increase the membership without having a parliamentary majority.”
Graham sees the bubbling crucible of dissent in the Labour party as dangerous territory and yet impossible to ignore. “Versions of these issues have been around since the 1950s,” he said. “I just think we are in a radically interesting time now.”
The play will follow a fictional Labour MP, Freeman, and his principled constituency agent, Greig, through 25 years of Labour party turmoil, from Kinnock to Blair and into the Corbyn era. He is working again with director Jeremy Herrin, with whom he collaborated on This House, but this time the drama is not just hotly controversial, but also set away from Westminster, in Labour’s traditional northern base.
It has been an especially tough week for Graham, with Lancashire’s enforced withdrawal and his own characteristically heavy workload. The arrival of Greig is a welcome outcome, he adds. “We are delighted by her vote of confidence in the project at this stage. She is a theatre beast, so she will hit the ground running.
“You can’t always control events and this week has been a good example of that,” he said. “I have a lot of things going on at the moment, but I actually started writing this about seven years ago when Labour lost power. It sort of found itself again as a play in the last 18 months, with the arrival of Corbyn and the growing scale of the crisis.”
Also announced on Friday was a bold comedic project – The Culture: A Farce in Two Acts – a play making fun of the creative hubbub in Hull this year. Graham studied drama at university in the city and has followed its progress as “UK city of culture” keenly.
“Hull’s success as a cultural destination is now going to be measured somehow and that’s surely suitable material for farce.” The play will be staged in January by Hull Truck theatre as a fond finale to a year in the spotlight, but is only one element of Graham’s growing body of work. His play Ink, which he describes as “kind of like an origin story for the Sun newspaper” transfers from the Almeida to the West End on 19 September, while This House is to embark on a national tour from February next year. What’s more, his play Quiz, based on the story of “coughing major” Charles Ingram’s controversial appearance on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, opens in Chichester in November.
Graham does not deny he has a ridiculous amount going on: “It’s not a part of my life that I am completely happy with … I over-rely on it. It’s just that these projects excite me. I know I am working too much.”
Graham’s recent work includes last year’s Monster Raving Loony, about Screaming Lord Sutch, Privacy, about the surveillance state, a study of 1970s terror called The Angry Brigade, the election night drama The Vote and Channel 4’s film Coalition, a dramatisation of the five days in 2010 that led to a power share between David Cameron and Nick Clegg. He has also recently scripted a musical adaptation of Finding Neverland, which opened on Broadway, while a feature film, X+Y, about a young maths wizard, was in cinemas last year.
So what drives this intense level of productivity? Graham thinks it is to do with his background in the Nottinghamshire village of Annesley, a place he has spent time in while writing Labour of Love.
“I know that to some extent that’s where the work ethic comes from. My mother has three jobs, for example. She works in a school and in a logistics warehouse in the evenings. And she also has a job in a local shop.”
The closure of the surrounding mines during the Thatcher years has also shaped him, Graham suspects, and he watched the constituency closely before the last election. In the end Labour only just retained the seat, despite the customary allegiances of the area. “Well, it was fucking close. It was 441 votes, I think. And Mansfield, next door, did go Tory.”
The question for Graham and the new play is how to react. “People are still so amazed at the results. I didn’t predict the losses or the support for Corbyn. All I would say is I don’t think it is clear cut that a leftwing movement is building. I can’t help but see it through the prism of where I come from, but I feel that while local constituency parties are quite supportive of the leftwingers, the voters have still moved heavily from Labour to Conservative. So what was it about this Labour programme that, while creating a lot of genuine new support, turned voters away?”
The pleasure for Graham has lain in the research. And not just his own, but that of the actors. “Without even being asked, they are going out to meet Labour councillors and listen to them. I hope that as a result, whatever your perspective, you’ll find a character that articulates your view. I am just trying very hard to be my own devil’s advocate as I write.”
Less pleasurable has been the violent impulses he has uncovered. “It is incredible. Unbelievable. I was horrified to find the fear of violence. I spoke to a young constituency agent the other day, just the sort of person you would want working on your behalf if you were an MP, but she was having to walk around with a rape alarm and wear gloves when she opened the post in case of some sort of chemical attack. It makes you want to grab some of these so-called Labour loyalists and say, what is wrong with you?”
The intemperate mood is fuelled by small minorities on both sides, Graham concedes, but he finds it “unfathomable” in a party once seen as a broad church.
“I don’t feel worried for myself, because the play will be a balanced portrayal. I’m not going to prosecute one particular case and I don’t think that means it has to be wet or woolly. I don’t need an agenda. In fact, that’s a position that may be helpful, whether you are a fan of Progress or Momentum.”
Labour of Love will revolve around a national narrative, with events such as Blair’s victory and John Smith’s death punctuating the drama of events. “It does not have a particularly linear time frame either,” Graham reveals. “The chronology weaves about before there is, hopefully, a clear picture at the end. Theatre can really help, I believe, because it provides a way to embrace all this complexity. The form just allows it. And even though I make it all sound very heavy and serious, it is, I should say, a comedy.”
Labour of Love opens at the Noel Coward theatre, London, on 3 October
WHEN WESTMINSTER TRANSFERS TO THE WEST END
HANDBAGGED
2013, by Moira Buffini, looked at the relationship between the Queen and Margaret Thatcher.
STUFF HAPPENS
2004, by David Hare, written in response to the Iraq war. The title is taken from Donald Rumsfeld’s 2003 response to looting in Baghdad: “Stuff happens and it’s untidy, and freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.”
MONSTER RAVING LOONY
2016, by James Graham, follows the political career of eccentric musician Screaming Lord Sutch.
COMMITTEE
2017, a musical with a book and lyrics by Hadley Fraser and Josie Rourke, from the transcript of a real session held in 2015 in which Camila Batmanghelidjh and Alan Yentob gave evidence about failed charity Kids Company. Music was by Tom Deering.
