Is it too soon? That’s what I felt when I heard about Greg Wilkinson’s new play, The Last Days of Liz Truss?, now playing at the White Bear Theatre in Kennington, directed by Anthony Shrubsall.
It’s billed as “a tragic-comic exploration of the tensions in politics”, as Emma Wilkinson Wright‘s nasal and determined Liz (even at school Mary Elizabeth objected to her first name) reflects on her rise and fall on her last morning in Number 10.
A girl who just wants to be noticed and who sees the rich kids at Oxford as “Technicolor in a world of monochrome” was bound to want to be different. Born into a socialist family, she loves the money-chasing culture of the 1980s and wants to be part of it.
She can get things done because she’s a woman and because she knows how to be seen and play the game. Rising rapidly from a PPE degree (politics, philosophy and economics, not the equipment needed in a pandemic) into the Lib Dems, then the Tories, as a MP, junior minister, various posts leading to Foreign Secretary, eyes on the top post.
She’s loyal, she tells us, but also single-minded to the point of stupidity, stomping the floor with ‘shan’t’ like a child when advised to dial back on her budget plans. She has a portrait of Thatcher (voiced, as are all the other players in this show, by Steve Nallon) for inspiration.
But alas, poor Truss. The Queen dies on her after two days in office, her budget plans go on hold, her conscience keeps going on about energy costs, and there’s always Putin to blame. A direct ‘Yorkshire lass’ just doesn’t fit with her Claire’s sparkle or coffee-fuelled creativity.
With a love of karaoke, a vision for growth that simply breaks markets and causes the newspapers ‘our people read’ to turn on her, this Liz Truss is not that limp, but I’d still rather trust the lettuce that outlived her with our financial stability.
The trouble is, laughter aside, this was a dark period in UK politics. An odd interlude suggesting that with her vision, we will fall into economic inequality and disarray within a decade, feels at odds with the rest, and heading beyond its promised 90 minutes last night, this play is just too long.
***
The Last Days of Liz Truss? is at the White Bear Theatre until 14 Dec with tickets here.
Image credit: Elliott Franks