Blair's Children review, The Cockpit Theatre

Political plays, and playwrights, are rarely right of centre. This may be because there are fewer obstacles for characters to overcome, and fewer reasons to be angry or impelled into artistic expression if you're on the right. Given the current political climate - people celebrating Mrs Thatcher's death, and saddled with an unloveable government which has trebled university fees and is struggling to get growth to one per cent, a play with the title Blair's Children suggests a sympathetic polemic.

To be precise, it suggests five sympathetic polemics because this two hour piece is the work of five established playwrights -  April De Angelis, Georgia Fitch, Anders Lustgarten, Mark Norolk, and Paula B Stanic  - who were each commissioned to create a single character whose narrative would then be interwoven with the others. Sympathy, however, is low on the ground, because whatever good he may have done, Tony Blair's legacy is Iraq. Everything he achieved is dwarfed by lives lost - more than a million according to the bleakest estimates.  

Blair Witch

Maggie has lost her soldier son, sent to war 'in chocolate boots' that melted in the desert sun. Marie loved what Blair did for local organisations trying to change lives at the bottom, but the knock-on effect of events overseas is that her mixed-race son has been radicalised and has disappeared. Vlatco, a Serb asylum seeker is cowed by his enforced lowly status, and his belief that Blair 'ethnically cleansed' his people from their home city. Jennifer, is a Blair babe - one of Alan Johnson's team. She lists the triumphs of the Blair government - and there were many - but she has seen how power corrupts: they'll suck your blood if you let them. Only Dee, tagged and full of stories from Feltham Young Offenders Institution, still has a modicum of hope, and he was three when Blair came into power. They are bleak scenarios demonstrating that a golden age is unsustainable in politics, because popular power corrupts. The actors - the lovely Michelle Butterly, Caroline Guthrie, Royce Pierreson, Christopher Patrick Nolan and Rosie Armstrong - work the narratives well under Director, Charlotte Westenra's, expert hand. 

In conclusion: The music played on entering and during the interval is The Verve, The Spice Girls, Aqua and the like. It's wonderfully nostalgic if you like pop, and challengingly nostalgic if you like politics. Mark Norfolk's character, Dee, is particularly entertaining, and brought to understated, charismatic, teenage, life by Royce Pierreson. 

References

Cockpit Theatre, Tickets (first week Special Offers on Blair's Children, and Don't Wake Me)

Cockpit Theatre, Gateforth Street, London NW8.     Run ends 22 June.