While Tony Blair may have felt the “hand of history” on his shoulder, dramatists are already considering his legacy in less flattering terms. I have seen plays about the infamous Granita deal, the formation and dissolution of New Labour, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have seen a play about the inquiry into those wars, which was no more revealing, and certainly less entertaining, than the inquiry on which it was based.
Finally, thanks to Michael Chaplin, who has turned the diaries of Chris Mullin into a tragicomic script worthy of its source material, we have the drama New Labour deserves, brought to the stage by Max Roberts. A bumbling, blinking John Hodgkinson, sporting a sort of reverse comb-over and charity shop suit that falls well short of his ankles takes the lead of the former Tribune editor, then Sunderland Labou MP, Chris Mullin.
Despite his overly cartoonish appearance, Hodgkinson is a convincing guide to New Labour as we are rushed headlong from victory in 1997 when everything seemed possible – “Vote Labour to make your leeks grow and to keep Sunderland in the Premier League” – to the final deathly convulsions of Gordon Brown’s Government. The frenetic pace never lets up and although a tad overlong the machinations of New Labour are never boring. Mullin slogs away on the backbenches, eventually rising to junior ministerial status. At one point, he is handed an invitation with note attached. “This is very low priority. I suggest we pass it to Mullin.” The futility and, at times, bitterness of thwarted intentions become all too apparent. Throughout it all, Mullin battles on, determined not to lose sight of why he entered the fray in the first place.
A supporting cast of four provides the voices of everyone from Blair (The Man), a brilliant Hywel Morgan, to John Major, Roy Hattersley, Brown, George Osborne (slimy as ever), a “miserable and angry” Glenda Jackson, and the real villain of the piece, Chief Whip Hilary Armstrong, portrayed with lisping malevolence by the excellent Tracy Gillman.
Despite the uncomfortably over-crowded pavement café-style seating in the Soho Theatre’s basement space A Walk on Part is an absolute must-see for anyone with more than a passing curiosity into how New Labour changed politics, cosied up to the “morally and intellectually deficient serial killer” George W Bush and ultimately blew it. This is a tale of big defeats and little victories. And as Mullin’s former boss John Prescott might put it, it’s absolutely bloody brilliant.
