Jeremy Herrin
As the general election looms, one of the sharpest political plays of recent years is campaigning for the audience vote. Lucy Johnston takes a safe seat beside the man reviving The Absence of War
Jeremy Herrin is on the campaign trail. When we speak, his team are already out on the road, and will be visiting a total of eleven UK cities in three months, to show the general public just what is at stake on 7th May.
“It’s going really well,” he shares. “It seems the closer we get to the election, the more audiences’ appetites are whetted.”
In fact, this particular political show is of the theatrical kind, a new staging of The Absence of War, by acclaimed playwright David Hare, which Jeremy has chosen to stage as part of his programme as artistic director of theatre company Headlong, as a touring co-production with the Rose Theatre and Sheffield Theatres.
“I felt I wanted to contribute to the occasion with a big play by a big-name writer. I’d not commissioned anything so I looked around at the options and selected this play because it seemed to me to be just the right balance of plausible and entertaining. It might have been written over twenty years ago, but it has so many similarities with the political landscape today, it still feels perfectly pitched.”
Ahead of writing the play, back in 1992, David Hare was invited to spend time behind the scenes of Labour’s general election campaign with Neil Kinnock. Jeremy is quick to clarify that the play is not a step-by-step documentary of that experience, rather it reflects the mood and attitude within the party and sets out the contradictions faced by a party leader who is campaigning for their shot at the biggest role in government.
“It really makes you think about what it is we are doing when we vote, and lays bare what it is we do in order to get elected. It presents a real conundrum. It shows that to get to the point of being elected you have to be thoroughly ruthless, completely lacking in integrity. But if these are the qualities you need in order to climb to the top, how can you then be trusted when you get there?”
Jeremy also feels the play reminds that the concerns of the electorate haven’t changed all that much since the 90s.
“Miliband can talk all he likes about health policy, for example, but it will only get him so far. There seems to be this cultural assumption that Labour just isn’t that good with the economy. Blair did a lot to dilute that, for a while, but still, when it comes around to voting, the country gets nervous.”
And in bringing his fictional candidate to the stage, the process has also helped Jeremy see similarities in the character traits across all of the recent Prime Ministers, regardless of party.
“These exceptional individuals all have a genuine desire to change the world for the better. Of course they do. But that belief is so strong they will pretty much do anything, so it also makes them vulnerable in a way."
"There quickly becomes a gap between the person they want to be and the person they become in order to get to where they need to be – they become so hell-bent on being voted in, they forget their vision. A lot of the play is very funny, but on a human level it’s actually quite a tragedy.”
The Absence of War will be showing at The Rose Theatre, in Kingston from April 13-25
