A Marvellous Year for Plums, Chichester Festival Theatre, May 2012

Following the debacle of the Suez crisis, Anthony Eden resigned as Prime Minister in January 1957, and he and his wife took ship to New Zealand. In this play a young Steward serves him tea, and Eden commends him on winning a boxing competition on board. They get into conversation, and when Eden asks the young man his name he gets the response, “Prescott, Sir”. The audience fell about.

Ian Fleming, Eden, Clarissa and Ann, all images Manuel Harlan

But this clever play by Hugh Whitemore is no comedy. And nor was the meeting between Eden and Prescott mere poetic licence, just a light moment amidst a serious study of political events that went badly wrong in 1956. Yet the grave nature of what was going on is relieved by a love affair, along with brief dancing interludes to excellent musical arrangements from Matthew Scott. The clever set designs by Simon Higlett allow scenes to merge from one to the next as various characters are slowly swept in or out of view by a revolving ring on the stage, aided by subtle lighting from James Whiteside, and this production by Philip Franks has great forward momentum.

Gaitskell and Ann

1956 was of course the year that Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, and this play shows Eden’s extraordinary mishandling of the crisis. Firm in resolve to take military action, then willing to back off under American pressure even when the French told him to sleep on it first. Eden interrupts the French PM at lunch when he is discussing the formation of the European Economic Community with the Germans, and acting as perfidious Albion didn’t help Britain’s case, to say nothing of the lack of moral clarity that surely affected our response to the Soviet invasion of Hungary. What a year it was.

Anthony Andrews portrayed Eden as a decent man yet inadequate prime minister, with Abigail Cruttenden entirely convincing as Clarissa his devoted (second) wife. Nicholas Le Prevost was excellent as Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the opposition, who is carrying on an affair with the delectable Ann Fleming, elegantly played by Imogen Stubbs. Gaitskell accused Eden of being the captain of a sinking ship that he steered onto the rocks, but the real opposition close at hand was Anthony Nutting, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. Fiercely played by Martin Hutson, we see him with David Yelland as an urbane Selwyn Lloyd, successor as Foreign Secretary to Eden himself, but described by Macmillan as “a middle class lawyer from Liverpool”.

Eden and his wife

These were the days when Class counted in a way that it doesn’t now, and three of the characters in this play were Old Etonians: Eden, Nutting, and Ian Fleming, while Gaitskell went to Winchester, and Selwyn Lloyd to Fettes. Fleming appears very much as a man of the world, attractively played by Simon Dutton, and he and his wife Ann are friends of the Edens. They are with them when the telephone call comes through saying the last troops have been withdrawn from Egypt. Eden spills his drink and lets out a yell like a wounded animal. This was a man who lost two brothers in the First World War and a son in the Second. His attempt to be a man of peace brought war, albeit briefly, and humiliation for both himself and Britain.

How would it have been different if they’d pushed on? Selwyn Lloyd muses on these things, and has no answers. But towards the end, Eden’s father, an irascible baronet whose occasional stage appearances lie in Eden’s imagination, has some cutting words to say about how to live your life, “Run straight … don’t play a double game …”. Eden did and he failed. We hear Rab Butler’s gibe that Eden was “half mad baronet, half beautiful woman”, referring to his father and mother, and towards the end we even see them both dancing together.

This play is cleverly constructed, with video images adding a subtle background, and in exposing the British background to the tragedies of 1956 it is hugely effective. As to the title, you have to wait for the words of Selwyn Lloyd’s gardener, for whom international politics holds not the slightest interest. But if you are interested, this is a must-see that should surely go on to the West End.

Performances continue until June 2 — for details click here.

The Real Inspector Hound / The Critic, Minerva Theatre, Chichester, July 2010

Both these entertaining plays end rather suddenly after a few bangs and plenty of laughs. With a poor cast they could easily fail, but in these performances the stylish overacting kept the audience in suspense and drew out the humour without ever overdoing it.

Moon and Birdfoot

In The Real Inspector Hound, Tom Stoppard uses his intellectual gymnastics to create a spoof of the murder mystery in an isolated house, temporarily cut off from the world by the rising tide. But it’s more than that — it’s also a parody of The Mousetrap, with the inspector arriving not on skis but wearing ‘two inflatable — and inflated — pontoons with flat bottoms about two feet across’. Stoppard used the title The Critics in an early draft of the play, and its connection with Sheridan’s Critic in this double bill is that both plays involve critics taking part in the action. In Hound the critics Moon and Birdboot are played with understated panache, and in true 1960s style, by Richard McCabe and Nicholas Le Prevost. They were both utterly convincing, the one as a second rank theatre critic, and the other as a womaniser who takes advantage of his alleged ability to influence careers.

Hound, The Company

The other actors were equally superb, with Una Stubbs as Mrs Drudge, and Sophie Bould and Hermione Gulliford as the attractive ladies of the house, Felicity and Cynthia. Joe Dixon played a creepily foppish Simon, Derek Griffiths a suitably single-minded Inspector Hound, and Sean Foley provided excellent spice as the irascibly assertive Major Magnus, as well as collaborating with Jonathan Church in directing both plays. The audience sat on all four sides of the stage, with the small critics’ section replaced after the interval by a curtained stage for Sheridan’s play within a play.

Puff, Sneer and Dangle

In The Critic we had many of the same actors, with Nicholas Le Prevost now playing Mr. Dangle, a rather boring and unctuously sincere theatre critic of the late eighteenth century. Una Stubbs was his wife, showing ennui and wit in equal measure, and Derek Griffiths was the supposedly more professional critic Mr. Sneer. Sean Foley reappeared in the delightfully camp role of Sir Fretful Plagiary, giving a marvellous solo performance, and Richard McCabe was superb as the playwright and impresario Puff whose play The Spanish Armada is given a rehearsal in front of the critics.

Mr. Puff's play

While the real Spanish Armada was of course in 1588, recent events in the summer of 1779, in which Britain found itself in a state of war with Spain, had inspired Mr. Puff to his creation, and this production of The Critic cleverly inserts some absolutely up-to-date remarks on politics during the preamble in Mr. Dangle’s drawing room. As to Mr. Puff’s play, which the actors had mercifully cut in places, the ham acting is very funny, yet the author of the text remains brilliantly in charge of his rehearsal, despite inconvenient questions and alterations. The entire ‘rehearsal’ cast worked wonderfully well together, with Joe Dixon delightful in overacting the part of Don Ferolo Whiskerandos. The final crash of part of the scenery was, at least to me, wholly unexpected and dramatic, and in case any audience member had got up to leave in proximity to the imminent event, an usher was ready to stop them. If the crash seemed dangerously real, it was, and along with other howlers it formed a glorious ending.

This wonderful double bill continues until 28^th August — for more details, click here. All photos by Manuel Harlan.