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Last year’s Breferendum divided Brits from Europe and each other, brought down the last PM and made the hitherto unknown profession of ‘trade negotiator’ the UK’s hottest job. Plenty of ingredients there for a storming state-of-the-nation drama. But this odd, slightly belated piece by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy and NT director Rufus Norris isn’t quite it.
‘My Country’ opens on the eve of the vote. We’re at a sort of national summit meeting. It’s been convened by a nice, harried lady called ‘Britannia’. And it’s attended by two blokes called ‘Scotland’ and ‘Cymru’ and other characters personifying pretty much every area in Britain apart from, mysteriously, London, the North West and the South East. After some allegorical bantz alluding to past wars and certain areas’ binge-drinking habits, Scotland, Cymru and the rest solemnly hold up photos of real people from real places and vow to relate their real words.
These words, captured by the NT team in a bunch of interviews conducted days after the referendum, are important and interesting. ‘Listen’, instructs Penny Layden’s stressed-out Britannia. And we do. When top-notch actors perform verbatim testimony such as this, it helps you listen harder and better because of the intense attention they bring to bear on it. And all these voices are worth listening to. You hear the sweet teenager from Merthyr Tydfil who thinks everything – including the local buses, shops, scenery and taxis – is really, really nice. The Scotsman whose school was owned by the posh school next door, where the kids had a different lunch hour so they didn’t have to mingle with the commoners. And dozens more, including Bojo comparing the EU to a lobster.
The trouble is, like everything about this confusing and endless episode in our political history, it’s less than the sum of its parts. It would have been brilliant if the NT had staged this as a quick reaction piece after the vote, when feelings were raw and no one was listening to anyone much. It’s great that the theatre is championing contemporary writers and topics right now, but it needs to be more nimble. Several months on, this is an interesting evening, but not an urgent snapshot of now, nor an ‘Under Milk Wood’ for Brexit Britain, distilling a particular place and time into something to last forever.
Duffy is a fantastic poet but the words of the people of the UK don’t gain anything from being framed by her words and the wacky setup and some cringey regional stereotyping don’t help either. Excluding London, presumably to show London audiences the parts of the country that they disregard, also feels a bit patronising to me. Ultimately this is intensely acted, well-intentioned, topical and a bit of a muddle. A lot like Brexit then but, at 90 minutes, a hell of a lot shorter.