Royal prerogative

No one should complain that My Country; a work in progress is a grim night out. It’s rare for a good play to be written by royal command. The co-authors are the Queen’s personal minstrel, Carol Ann Duffy, and the director of her Royal National Theatre, Rufus Norris. These inspiring artistes have sent their vassals beyond the security of London to annotate ‘the words of people across the UK’ in the hope of understanding a humanitarian disaster: Brexit. The show makes its prejudices clear by dedicating the script to a Remain voter, Jo Cox, who was murdered by a Leave supporter. And it promotes the view, common among Remainers, that Brexit is a crisis caused by thick proles.

Seven actors represent various parts of Britain and they recite random thoughts about stuff: migrants, bananas, mosques, black flags, benefits, pyjamas, sheep farming, taxis, disbanded football clubs, Brussels, cornflakes, House of Commons whisky, and so on. Then it changes from reportage to drama and each region boastfully competes with the others to assert its pre-eminence in sport, leadership, dancing, and so on. It’s a colossal muddle that barely meets the level of classroom intelligibility. Fact and fiction are confused constantly, and no indication is given that a switch has been made. Even within the passages of real-life statements it’s unclear who is speaking. An early chunk delivered by a youngish man representing ‘South West’ (but speaking in a northern accent) turns out to be the testimony of a teacher who is elderly and female. The script’s narrator plays seven roles, five male, two female. Her male roles are all factual. Of her female roles, one is factual the other fictional. Quite a hotchpotch. She wears a black trouser suit throughout but when she assumes her make-believe persona, Britannia, she wears a silly hat and spouts the sort of weightless, ornamental rhetoric that would give a true poet a coronary.