REVIEW: 1979 by Michael Healey at Finborough 2 - 27 January 2024

‘a sharp play, positive about the power of politics to do good and despairing about how holding on to power prevents those in office from using it effectively’ ★★★

A young Conservative Prime Minister his party didn’t really want faces a likely election he’s likely to lose while he tries just to get on with the job and everyone politics all around him. Not Rishi Sunak in Britain in 2024, but Joe Clark in Canada in 1979 making his progress from unexpected victory to ignominious defeat in the European premiere of a play that debuted in Calgary in 2017.

Clark is something of a forgotten figure, squeezed between and dwarfed by the charmingly charismatic Pierre Trudeau (father of the current Canadian PM) and ebulliently tarnished Brian Mulroney even among those who know much about Canadian politics. It’s a curious thought that across the border in the USA at precisely the same time, Jimmy Carter’s legacy as an optimistic outsider out of his depth is much the same as Clark’s, even if he’s had a much more illustrious political afterlife.

1979 presents Clark as a Candide-like figure, optimistic about the ability of politicians to achieve some good while failing to notice that all around him relegate policy achievement below the politics required simply to hold on to power. It’s a sharp play, both positive about the power of politics to do good and despairing about how the very act of holding on to that power often constrains or prevents those in office from using it very effectively. It also, helpfully for a British audience, is the first I’ve ever seen that uses footnotes (on a video screen behind the Prime Minister’s office where the action occurs) to fill in some of the more obscure details of who’s who and what’s happening.

Stage economics give us three actors playing 8 roles with Joseph May playing Joe Clark as a cheerful man out of his depth and willing to be lectured and manipulated by colleagues, opponents and even the lad from the mail room (who will turn out to be Stephen Harper, the Thatcherite Canadian PM of the 2010s). There’s comedy in here, and the fun of seeing Ian Porter and Samantha Coughlan play both men and women, and, indeed, when the plot requires it, switching places so that both of them play Foreign Secretary Flora MacDonald in separate scenes.

It’s a witty, literate script, too, if perhaps a little lost at times in the detail of fairly obscure policy developments of near-50 years ago, and the overarching message that nice guys come last in politics is both clear and not over-hammered home. Porter’s smoothly smarmy Trudeau is a pleasure, and Coughlan’s excellent throughout, but particularly as Clark’s wife and as the young Stephen Harper. And May, wide-eyed and smiling even as he’s hit by the juggernauts of crushing defeat and consignment to the dustbin of history, give the play both a thoroughly solid base and a sense of what might have been.

1979 by Michael Healey

Director: Jimmy Walters

Finborough Theatre 2 January to 27 January 2024

Box Office: https://finboroughtheatre.co.uk/production/1979/

Presented by Sarah Lawrie for Proud Haddock in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre.

Reviewer:

David Weir’s plays include Confessional (Oran Mor, Glasgow), Better Together (Jack Studio, London). Those and others performed across Scotland, Wales and England, and in Australia, Canada, South Korea, Switzerland and Belgium. Awards include Write Now Festival prize, Constance Cox award, SCDA best depiction of Scottish life, and twice Bruntwood longlisted.