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| Version 2 | Version 3 |
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| If Only – review | If Only – review |
| (34 minutes later) | |
| David Edgar has always been hooked on the process of politics. And in this fascinating, if occasionally flawed, play he pre-empts the forthcoming TV adaptation of Andrew Adonis's book 5 Days in May by examining the foundation of the current coalition government. But Edgar goes beyond that to ask how, in the run-up to the next general election, the three major parties can reclaim their lost identities. | David Edgar has always been hooked on the process of politics. And in this fascinating, if occasionally flawed, play he pre-empts the forthcoming TV adaptation of Andrew Adonis's book 5 Days in May by examining the foundation of the current coalition government. But Edgar goes beyond that to ask how, in the run-up to the next general election, the three major parties can reclaim their lost identities. |
| This is not docudrama, but it is clearly meticulously researched. In the first half Edgar shows three figures – a Labour special adviser, a Lib Dem staffer and a Tory candidate – trying to get back home from a Spain covered in volcanic ash-cloud in April 2010. Between them the three characters devise scenarios for a possible coalition and come up with something that Edgar suggests is perilously close to what actually happened: that negotiations were based on a "fictional convenience". In the second half, set in August 2014 during the first world war commemorations, Edgar shows the three characters reunited and, in advance of a Tory leader's conference speech designed to outflank Ukip, wrestling with the moral dilemma of whether they should make private information public. | This is not docudrama, but it is clearly meticulously researched. In the first half Edgar shows three figures – a Labour special adviser, a Lib Dem staffer and a Tory candidate – trying to get back home from a Spain covered in volcanic ash-cloud in April 2010. Between them the three characters devise scenarios for a possible coalition and come up with something that Edgar suggests is perilously close to what actually happened: that negotiations were based on a "fictional convenience". In the second half, set in August 2014 during the first world war commemorations, Edgar shows the three characters reunited and, in advance of a Tory leader's conference speech designed to outflank Ukip, wrestling with the moral dilemma of whether they should make private information public. |
| Edgar is not above making use of his own fictional conveniences; and I find it hard to believe that even policy wonks would, at four in the morning on a French roadside, be talking like leading articles. Yet Edgar's play deals with ideas and issues confronting us now, and suggests that British politics is in danger of allowing single-issue groups to set the agenda: in effect, the play is a call for one-nation Tories, Labour idealists and progressive Lib Dems to stand up for what they believe. It's fair to report that the play was rapturously received by a Chichester audience and that Angus Jackson's production is very well acted by Jamie Glover, Martin Hutson and Charlotte Lucas as, respectively, the anxiety-ridden Tory, Labour and Lib Dem representatives. The introduction of a fourth character, standing for the next generation, feels like a dramatic device but that matters far less than the play's sense of troubled topicality. | Edgar is not above making use of his own fictional conveniences; and I find it hard to believe that even policy wonks would, at four in the morning on a French roadside, be talking like leading articles. Yet Edgar's play deals with ideas and issues confronting us now, and suggests that British politics is in danger of allowing single-issue groups to set the agenda: in effect, the play is a call for one-nation Tories, Labour idealists and progressive Lib Dems to stand up for what they believe. It's fair to report that the play was rapturously received by a Chichester audience and that Angus Jackson's production is very well acted by Jamie Glover, Martin Hutson and Charlotte Lucas as, respectively, the anxiety-ridden Tory, Labour and Lib Dem representatives. The introduction of a fourth character, standing for the next generation, feels like a dramatic device but that matters far less than the play's sense of troubled topicality. |
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