My Country review, Dorfman Theatre

This is not a review because I left halfway through My Country, which means I left after 45 minutes. I bought a ticket knowing the play was about Brexit and based on interviews conducted across the country but I had genuinely expected to hear more than the wall-of-sound pub-talk that punctuated the Brexit debates; the small justifications and big accusations that made our ears buzz during local news vox pops and talk-radio phone-ins; the well-meaning handwringing on Facebook, and the truly terrible trolling on Twitter. So instead of reviewing My Country - which is apparently written by Carol Ann Duffy, and the audience may well have been offered a poetic reprieve at the end -  this is a review of the idea behind My Country, which is to create a drama from current national debates.

We have of course had verbatim reenactments of judicial reviews from Stephen Lawrence to Baha Mousa. There was the brilliant London Road where Alecky Blythe created music from interviews with the residents of Ipswich, in the wake of a series of brutal murders. All these were staged after the events had concluded, and a level of interpretation and narration could be layered over the actuality. In other words, the evidence could be dramatised. David Hare does it with politics, often brilliantly, but the Brexit story has  barely started. The small-minded tittle-tattle that the chattering classes believe has precipitated Britain's ruin, has yet to be proven misguided. I say that as a Remainer. We do not yet know what the story will be.

If we don't yet know the story, what is there to dramatise, and who is paying to see it?  Clearly the punters - including me - are people who're interested in the news, but the UK does not even trigger Article 50 until next week.  What is to be gained from hearing more of the same - do we need either more teeth-gnashing or more flags of St George?  In my opinion, no. It's a waste of time and money, but the critics at tonight's performance may think otherwise, and My Country is going on national tour and it will hit different nerves in different geographies.

In conclusion: Journalists are trained to ask the right questions and get all the information when a story is breaking. Dramatists sift through the pieces like detectives once the press has moved on, and find insight through hindsight. When everyone with an interest in a story is still on the scene, dramatists struggle to keep up with events, let alone innovate.


My Country, Dorfman Theatre, RNT, South Bank, London SE1
Run ends 22 March and then My Country goes on national tour