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 Politically themed plays like "The Vote", "Dead Sheep" and a
revival of "The Audience", portraying Queen Elizabeth's dealings
with past prime ministers, are drawing big audiences ahead of
Britain's most uncertain national election in decades.
Less than a week before the May 7 vote, opinion polls show Prime
Minister David Cameron's Conservatives and the opposition Labour
party neck-and-neck, with a surge in Scottish nationalist
support further complicating the picture.
"The Vote", a drawing-room comedy set in a London polling
station with a cast of more than 40 -- including Dench, who
shows up in the last 15 minutes -- is one of the hottest tickets
in town, with seats sold by lottery.
It will reach a broader audience when it is broadcast live on
national television on election night, its madcap finale
scheduled to coincide with the polls closing.
"I think a lot of people think theater, especially political
theater, isn't for them, it sounds so worthy and serious and
earnest," playwright James Graham told Reuters in an interview.
"From the very beginning we just wanted to make it entertaining,
farcical and funny because a lot of this stuff is. There is an
absurdity to how we pick our government."
The play shows everyone from a Russian lesbian and her lover to
a drunken young man turning up to cast their ballots, and
everything that could go wrong does.
Two teenage girls, voting for the first time, are so overwhelmed
by the "old-school" use of pencils to mark ballot papers and the
lack of information about the names listed that one of them,
contravening a rule banning mobile phones, uses hers to ask: "Siri,
who should I vote for?"
Other plays dissect the political process and the workings of
government.
"Dead Sheep" portrays the downfall of Margaret Thatcher
following a famous 1990 House of Commons speech by her
supposedly subservient Deputy Prime Minister Geoffrey Howe,
whose attack mode was once described by an opponent as "like
being savaged by a dead sheep".
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Thatcher, in television presenter and first-time playwright Jonathan
Maitland's production, is played by a man, Steve Nallon. He parodied
Thatcher's voice in the 1980s satirical puppet show "Spitting Image"
and now applies that expertise to impersonating her as well.
It was said of Thatcher that she was "the best man in the cabinet"
but Maitland said that was not the motivation for picking Nallon for
the role.
"This guy isn't any old actor, he's like a psychological stalker of
Margaret Thatcher, he knows what she had for breakfast the day she
won the election ... he's extraordinary," Maitland said.
That level of insight allows Nallon, and Maitland's play, to provide
what he said was an extra dimension to the political experience --
to show what goes on behind the scenes.
"I think the stage can deliver a really compelling, powerful and
entertaining truth that amplifies what you're seeing in the papers
and hearing on the radio," Maitland said.
Or, as Graham put it, "It's like having a backstage pass to a world
that seems very closed up and inaccessible."
At a performance of "The Vote", Paxman, who conducted TV interviews
with Cameron and Labour leader Ed Miliband last month, offered a
different reason for the political plays' popularity: the dullness
of the election campaign itself.
"This is more interesting than watching Cameron and Miliband ...
posturing, inasmuch as they can even get up the energy to posture,"
he said.
(Editing by Catherine Evans)
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