Kingmaker

By Briony Rawle

As the goings-on in Westminster have become more and more transparent to the general public since the media revolution of the last few decades, a question has arisen: has politics descended into a cesspool of party alliances and petty personal ambitions in recent years, or has it always been like this but we just never saw or heard about it? Kingmaker is a cynical portrait of Westminster politics as we know it today – a scrabbling, clawing popularity contest where policy and law-making are simply pawns in a giant game.

Alan Cox convincingly plays a barely-veiled incarnation of Boris Johnson in this seedy story; the incumbent Mayor of London with a booming and bumbling public-schoolboy persona, who has got to the top because he just loves to win. Cox’s character is instantly recognisable, and probably more believable as a character than Johnson himself, whose own larger-than-life character would never seem convincing on stage. Cox’s character Max Newman is running for leader of the Tory party, and in the few days before the ballot he and his rival are called into a meeting where his Oxbridge fellow, Eleanor Hopkirk MP, threatens to ruin Newman’s chances with revelations about a dark event in their past.

The action plays out over the course of this one meeting, interspersed with monologues, as the three characters wrestle with each other for supremacy using every verbal weapon at their disposal. The dialogue is lofty, wry and elegant, but it leads the actors into very arch and mannered performances, giving the impression of a genteel Restoration farce. Some of the acting also doesn’t seem to move quickly enough to cope with the writhing, twisting narrative, but there are many well-built moments of tension, and the comedy in the script is well-executed.

The play is cleverly written, systematically exposing the characters’ secrets and motives in a miniature of the Westminster playground, and it places itself in a very specific moment that we may face in reality in just a few months’ time. A great satirical show for those interested in politics, with sophisticated cunning and lots of bite.

Kingmaker

Pleasance Courtyard (Beneath)

30th July – 25th August @ 15:00 (1 hour)

★★★★

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