Whipping It Up
Bush Theatre, London

Andrew Haydon
posted 16 November 2006

It's easy to see why Steve Thompson has chosen the whips' office as the setting for his new play; even in this age of parliamentary transparency, the whips' office retains a heady clandestine atmosphere, which is almost theatrical in its own right.

Whipping It Up takes us to December 2009, six months after a narrow Conservative victory returns a Tory government with parliamentary majority of three. The upper whips' office has become the main engine room of the party - votes on seemingly minor bills have been imbued with the terrible power to prompt votes of no confidence and force leadership contests.

The play opens with the whips' office facing the threat of five backbench rebel MPs voting against a minor bill. To this is added an attractive parliamentary researcher (an excellent Fiona Glascott) with a bundle of amorous haiku and a personalised porcelain hippo given her by the disgruntled victim of a recent cabinet reshuffle - effectively offering his head on a plate. There is also a leadership challenge brewing, a chief whip dressed as Santa, who is suffering from a heart condition, and an opposition chief whip with just as much determination to play dirty (superbly played by Helen Schlesinger). With these increasingly farcical-sounding threads Thompson contrives to spin a ripping yarn, with enough twists, turns and unexpected double-crosses to keep even the most die-hard politickers guessing until the last minute.

Half-way through the play, a junior whip, when disparaging the new prime minister ('He's very… next door'), alights on the happy image that the Tories are like the cast of a Jacobean play, who 'should have someone gothic to play the lead'. Of course, it seems slightly incredible that someone within Tory ranks should voice such a well-worn lefty calumny - but here it is the detail which lets the audience know what sort of play we're watching. This isn't modern political drama or satire - forget The West Wing or Yes, Minister - what we're looking at here is a Jacobean tangle of plot and counter-plot, dissembling and intrigue.

The cast is excellent. I've never been a great admirer of Robert Bathurst on television, but as Alastair, the deputy chief whip, his familiar, slightly-pained, lop-sided smile is translated into an utterly convincing look of laconic ruthlessness, suggesting that he should get out of playing put-upon nice guys altogether and concentrate on cultivating his nasty streak. Lee Ross as the junior whip, Tim, is - while perhaps a little too cockney given his apparent private school education - otherwise spot-on as the young, self-serving, cocky, wide-boy, new money Tory, whose appointment springs from his wealthy father's large donations to the party. Of course, the performance likely to sell most tickets is the stage appearance of Richard Wilson - the man condemned to fame as TV's Victor Meldrew. Indeed his casting as the chief whip does bring with it a certain amount of inevitable baggage, making the character several shades less threatening and belligerent than it could have been in the hands of a different actor. As it is, the chief's threats and slurs do, at times, irresistibly recall Meldrewish moments of exasperation. That said, Wilson's reading of the part, while perhaps not definitive, is still hugely entertaining.

The play's one-room setting allows the Bush to do exactly what the Bush does best; decorating the small stage in a beautifully detailed, re-creation of a fusty Westminster office complete with little jokes (a notice board with the photos of party backbenchers has had the label 'Backbenchers' scribbled out and replaced with 'Peasants' in black marker pen; a large Star Wars poster and toy light-sabre come into their own as Bathurst strides over to them, switching on the light-sabre to declare in Darth-Vader-ish tones: 'The rebellion has been crushed').

For a play nominally about politics, Thompson gets away with less political material than you might expect. There is an inevitable amount of Tory-bashing, coupled with some equally wonky pro-Tory speeches, which also sound as if they were written by someone who doesn't like the Conservatives very much, while the tiny number of criticisms levelled at Labour seem feeble by comparison. But, in the main, this is a play about personalities. At heart, this is a work play, looking at the rivalry and collaboration between generations in an office. Much of the drama outside the main plotlines is provided by the personality clashes between the young, middle-aged and retiring whips.

In spite of Thompson's obvious distaste for the Conservatives, his three leading characters are likeable and, by the conclusion, allowed a condition of near-heroism. Although he may disagree with what he imagines to be the policies of a putative Tory future, it appears that in the course of his researches Thompson has been at least partially seduced by the greater ideals of public service and self-sacrifice, which on the surface seem to sit uncomfortably alongside dogmas of radical selfishness, but are nonetheless at least as much a fundamental part of traditional Tory thinking as recently fashionable Thatcherite or neocon ideals. Happily, Thompson captures something of the romance surrounding the job at the same time as offering criticism of its potentially corrosive effect on a democratic process; allowing that a public school atmosphere, too many late nights, and sheer adrenalin are an understandably enjoyable, if somewhat old-fashioned, way to run a parliamentary democracy in the 21st century.

Till 16 December 2006.