Move over West Wing, The Contender and any lingering memories of Floridian ballot boxes - Americans aren't the only ones who can make a drama out of politics. Alistair Beaton does his bit for Britain with Feelgood, which succeeds in wringing homegrown political scenarios for both their drama as well as their uproarious comedy. Originally seen at the Hampstead Theatre, Feelgood arrives in the West End just in time for the run-up to the real-life General Election, and the word on the street is that Labour ministers have been warned off venturing anywhere near the Garrick Theatre. Probably wise for, though never named, New Labour, with its devotion to the practised art of media manipulation - ahem, that is, media relations - is unquestionably the inspiration for Beaton's satirical wit.
Tony's cronies guffawing over jokes of which they themselves are the butt is the kind of photo opportunity that would have Beaton's lead character, Eddie (Henry Goodman), running for his cellphone. Eddie is the spin-doctor supremo for the Prime Minister (aka DL, the Divine Light or Disastrously Lightweight) and come party conference time - with eco-warriors rioting, delegates straying off-message and journalists digging for dirt - he's in full flow.
On the eve of the PM's speech, Eddie and speech writer-cum-conscientious dogsbody Paul (Peter Capaldi) have holed themselves up in a hotel suite to get it right. The stirring phrases they concoct exhibit such a startling ring of familiarity ("a job culture not a yob culture" etc) that you begin to suspect Beaton has written more of a portrait rather than a send-up.
Enter Nigel Planer's wonderfully befuddled "Achilles heel" of a Life Peer who confesses that secret genetically modified crop trials on his country estate have produced a beer with rather unfortunate side effects. Eddie and his flunkies - which also include Asha (a rather stiff Amita Dhiri) and roped-in gag writer Simon (Pearce Quigley) - trip into crisis control mode in an attempt to contain a scandal that could topple the government. And Eddie's journalist ex-wife (Sian Thomas as chain-smoking crusader) is firmly in their sights.
Under Max Stafford-Clark's pacy direction, the laughs come thick and fast, and the cast perform in spades with characters who are fascinating bundles of bodily tics, bugbears and baggage (particularly Goodman who turns in an athletically captivating performance as Eddie). Near the end of Act II, proceedings turn sinister but, though Beaton conveys his message about the dangers of "government by headlines" loud and clear, he avoids letting things get too serious.
In the final scene, Jonathan Cullen's DL, in a spot-on impersonation of you-know-who, at last shows his face to deliver the "spontaneous" speech in which every pause and sip of water has been carefully scripted. Brilliant!
Terri Paddock
Note: The following review dates from February 2001 and the production's original run at the Hampstead Theatre.
The Thatcher years threw up any number of plays about the Conservative Regime - mostly sour, didactic little pieces to match a sour, didactic time. A more impressive contribution was made by David Hare's The Absence of War, about the backstage failure of the Labour Party to get elected. Now that they have been elected, we at last have a blisteringly funny, frequently scathing account of the Labour Party in power, Feelgood, that is premiering at Hampstead Theatre en route to a West End transfer that must surely be a certainty.
Alistair Beaton's brilliant comedy, set at party political conference time in the suite of the hotel that the Prime Minister's closest advisers are using as their speech-writing base, unravels in a superbly orchestrated, highly topical satire of the art of spin-doctoring.
With a scandal threatening to break over genetically modified hops (whose accidental use in beer has seen men developing breasts and seeing their genitals shrink), the Prime Minister's press secretary, Eddie, will stop at nothing to ensure that it doesn't make the news. As played to pointed perfection by Henry Goodman, this is a comic villain of the highest order.
Surrounded by speech writer Paul (Jeremy Swift), the PM's assistant (Amita Dhiri), bumbling Life Peer George (Nigel Planer) and Simon, a television comedy writer who has been drafted in to add some jokes to the PM's speech (Pearce Quigley), Goodman's Eddie is fighting to control both the ever-changing message and the medium by which it is delivered. His former wife Liz (Sian Thomas) is a campaigning journalist already on the trail of the scandal, and he will stop at nothing, it seems, to prevent it getting out.
With Goodman at the helm, Act One erupts in the funniest revelation of comic character, lines and situation since the spiralling-out-of-control events of the second act of Michael Frayn's Noises Off, generating wave upon wave of such sustained laughter that I've not heard in the theatre since then.
Act Two of Feelgood never quite achieves the same level of comic bliss, but is still full of good humour even as it takes a darker, deeper turn to make some more serious points. Beautifully observed and played throughout, you emerge from Max Stafford Clark's clever production healthily sceptical, scared and scarred about the political process.
Mark Shenton
