The Promise
By Paul Unwin
Directed by Jonathan Kent
CFT Minerva Theatre
Star rating: 3
When this play was conceived, written and a decision to stage it at Chichester was made, nobody knew that when it opened a new labour government would have come to power, with a huge landslide majority just three weeks earlier. The parallels between 1945 and now are uncanny.
Paul Unwin’s play, initially fast-paced, but a bit patchy as it progresses, explores the politics of post-War Britain with a specific focus on the birth of the NHS. And given the anxiety about the NHS today, that’s another reason why the play often feels topical and fresh.
Clare Burt as Ellen Wilkinson the passionate far left politician who just wants “to make things better”, is outstanding from the moment she addresses the Labour Party at the beginning to her lonely death in 1947. Burt is very good at delivering funny but devastating put-downs especially in her character’s affair with the self interested, centrist Herbert Morrison (Reece Dinsdale).
There’s a fine performance from Clive Wood as the in-your-face Ernie Bevin and Andrew Woodall looks and sounds so much like Clement Atlee it’s almost unsettling. David Robb’s slimy, pragmatic Lord Moran is a delight and Richard Harrington plays Nye Bevan with steely, determined passion. It’s a big cast of fourteen and, as a company, they play off each other engagingly, partly because the dialogue flows so naturalistically.
Martyn Ellis is convincing as Winston Churchill but the scene in which he haunts the dying Wilkinson is far too long.
Peter Mumford’s video projection creates plenty of period atmosphere with black and white images of buildings and events and Deborah Andrews’s costume designs range from the sumptious (dressing gown worn by Allison Mackenzie as Jennie Lee) to the coats and scarves worn by the cabinet during the bitterly cold winter of 1946/7 when coal shortages were a major worry.
