Prescient Political Plays
Earlier this year Out of Joint presented a collection of short political plays at the Arts Theatre in London. The texts are now freely available online and make stimulating reading.
David Hare’s offering, Ayn Rand Takes a Stand, imagines a conversation between the philosopher novelist and George Osborne, whom Rand calls Gideon (that being his original name). It’s a playful meditation on the serious contradiction at the heart of the Tory party right now – the idea that you can have a free market without the free movement of labour.
Alistair Beaton’s The Accidental Leader is a brilliant romp through the internal arguments animating the Labour Party today. It presciently imagines a group of Blairites plotting a coup against their current leader – and it was written before the mass resignation of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet following the Brexit vote.
In it, Nina, a representative of ‘Impetus’ (it’s a thinly veiled satire) says:
Oh, I do love your centre ground. Sounds so reasonable, doesn’t it? The centre ground. But does the centre ground stay in the same place? I don’t think so. Blink and you miss it as it shifts to the right. Whoosh whoosh whoosh, there it goes.
There are too many good lines to quote. It’s better than all the op-eds I’ve read about the split within the Labour Party.