Messaging Gina Miller before I went to the launch of a new play about her and Theresa May, Gina told me that she was
“Very nervous about the play! People will think it’s all true”
She needn’t have been. The play is kind to both her and May and even manages to recast her husband as a sex-bomb. The audience seems to have been mainly 60 something remoaners, apart from my mate Pete (a non-revisionist Brexiteer), they were sympathetic – there was little reputational risk at stake. We filed out onto the Thames riverside , it seemed a long way to Wear-side.
The majority of the action is a dreary re-hash of “thick of it” and “yes minister” humour.
The angry voices of the trolls who saw Miller as a traitor are heard off stage and their tweets read aloud by Amara Karan, who plays the Guyanese-British business owner.
Ultimately, the delay to Article 50 was part of May’s downfall and the last scene of the play sees a fanciful first meeting of both women in May’s country house in Berkshire. The two women end up in an embrace but this seems more out of despair for what has happened to British politics since.
The play is at its most powerful when it shows us the sexual politics that allowed Boris Johnson to succeed where May couldn’t. Ironically, Miller’s behavior which at the time was criticised as pedantry , now appears the nobler for the descent of Government into its current shameful state. Miller and May may not see eye to eye on anything else, but they are united in bitterness about that.
I don’t go to the theatre to see political plays, unless the politics is Shakespearian, but I wanted to see this one, because I know Alan and Gina through their work on True and Fair financial statements. They taught me the value of transparency, before the transparency taskforce was a twinkle in our eye.
They are now transferring their steely glare to British politics through the True and Fair Party.
I admire Theresa and Gina , both of whom feature on this blog. I like bloody difficult women but they rarely like each other.
And I most admire them for putting up with what they have to, though like Alan Miller and Philip May – I know this means sharing the load!
Had the play been written six months later, perhaps we might have included Cressida Dick. Bloody difficult women are needed in British public life right now. It’s good that both May and Miller remain in politics, what we would do without them? I hope we haven’t seen the last of Cressida Dick for the same reason.
