Hurrah for the stage. It has proved exceptionally nimble at responding imaginatively to current events. Book publishing and movies can’t reflect what is going on immediately. The sclerotic commissioning process of the BBC means that the corporation is now hopeless at quickly generating anything that is not news. Yet two weeks ago the Royal Court delivered an NHS broadside, and now the Donmar gives us The Vote. It is by a long way one of the most enjoyable and accomplished plays of this year.
James Graham’s drama is so up to the minute that it almost leapfrogs events. It is dextrously woven together. Watching its huge cast (the biggest ever at the Donmar) is like seeing 40 shuttles shoot across a giant loom to create a rich picture.
The shrillest claim to originality was live transmission on telly on election night. Actually this was its least interesting aspect. Though deprived of inessential snippets of dialogue timed to take place during ad breaks, viewers got the essential ingredients: a galactic cast and Graham’s strong (apolitical) script. What was missing was the simultaneous sense of intimacy (you can be close enough in the Donmar almost to see the pores on an actor’s face) and the broad sweep of the action, which looked more cramped and artificial on a small screen.
Taking place in the last 90 minutes before the polls close, the play is set in a polling station – a school, perfectly evoked in Robert Jones’s design, with officers perched on a vaulting horse. The most enticing aspect is a most glorious roll of actors – just beginning with Catherine Tate and Nina Sosanya. The most surprising feat is that without any cajoling it persuades you that voting is crucial, binding and individual. If Ed Miliband had collaborated with the Donmar rather than Russell Brand, a few more under 25-year-olds might have got into the booths.
Conceived by Graham and director Josie Rourke while working on Privacy, this is farce and social realism. The plot’s trigger is the notion that one old codger – a marvellously shifty, shuffling Timothy West – has cast his vote twice. Attempts by the polling officials to cover up the blunder spiral into further disasters and alarms, into devil dealings with Haribos, and strangulated forms of communication: “You don’t have to be Turing to crack your code.” Hula hoops are employed; slapstick is not.
A lot of people would, rightly, pay just to see Judi Dench stumping around, speaking in unison with her real-life daughter Finty Williams and quelling all opposition with her Quaker equanimity – and foul mouth. Or to watch principled but doomed Mark Gatiss, who starts off so relaxed that he sings the names of prime ministers to the EastEnders theme tune, wind himself into a frenzy of disappointment. Or to see consummately comic Paul Chahidi, as an independent candidate on a very single-issue ticket, presiding over his drollness like a bishop.
The revelation for me was that an evening made up of individual glimpses projected a common aim. As each different figure scuttled into the action – a drunk, a man bent under his double bass, a gaggle of jackdaw schoolgirls – the stage became more varied but the commitment became more intense. That stubby pencil in the booth was common to them all.
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