When you’re confronted with a play about the UK tabloid phone hacking scandal you’d be right to have your doubts over the sincerity and vision of what’s about to go down on stage. Is this just a money-making current affairs type scheme or is it a comment on capitalism, wealth and politics through theatre? With premium price tickets, four pound ice cream and celebrity incentives (she may not be Billy Piper, but Lucy Punch was in Hot Fuzz, don’t you know), I’m inclined to put Great Britain in a box with the likes of I Can’t Sing and Spice Girls: The Musical. I’d say that even the writer had some doubts over the play’s credibility too – if Richard Bean’s one-liner filled but slightly lazy script work is anything to go by.
Bean himself admitted to not being fully “into” the project but, quite rightly and truthfully, he added that when you get a phone call from the National commissioning you to write a play, you write that play no questions asked. And, credit where credit’s due, Bean not only manages to make such a topic lively, quippy and, in places, satirical, but he also managed to eke it out for a devastating two hours. Or rather, the producers did putting in endless streams of made-up news footage and clips of hilarious viral YouTube videos which may well have been right on the money in 2012. So much for the up-to-date ‘state of Britain’ play for which we’d been hoping. (But had we been hoping though? I’m not so sure).
If I was engaged at half time, by the time the final act wafted to its underwhelming climax, I had well and truly lost my mind with boredom. And it wasn’t as if the text was slow – Bean, as always, keeps pace, keeps characters that say the unexpected and keeps a sense of what’s real and what’s ridiculous. Throughout the play Bean plays on this, fully aware that the tabloids he satirizes and the politics he jokingly condemns are part of a bigger, more ridiculous world. A more serious world, with more serious consequences, but a more ridiculous world nonetheless.
What the production lacks then is the quirky, tongue in cheek style in which it was written. Comprised of a number of just-for-laughs actors, the cast also features a leading lady who functions more as a narrator than a three dimensional character with iffy morals and narcissistic tendencies (a character I much would’ve preferred to the sassy, fuck-the-politicians-for-power with no regrets type woman we’re presented with). For a satire, Great Britain takes itself too seriously. A victim of a swift west end transfer and too much money, this production lacks any thought-provoking character portrayal as well any real belly laughs, thanks to a cast who desperately want to make you do just that.
