A drama featuring a face-off between an MP and a constituent outraged by the failings of the system might be considered provident timing a week before election night.
But Joe Penhall’s drama is a very different animal from the quintessential political play, with no cynicism, spin or party politics, none of the brash polemics of David Hare nor the wide-ranging scope of James Graham.
It is led by a single issue – or so it initially seems – about personal safety versus community responsibility, its themes overcast by the real-life murders of Jo Cox and David Amess.
Anna Maxwell Martin is Monica, an opposition backbencher juggling a young family with political life. James Corden is Alex, an ex-soldier who served in Afghanistan, now in the middle of a messy divorce involving the family courts.
When he first enters her constituency office as a handyman installing a panic alarm, they connect. But the bonhomie turns into a high-stakes clash. She fears for her safety when he shows signs of becoming violent and calls in a police protection officer (Zachary Hart).
Played straight through at 90 minutes and resolutely focused on local politics, it becomes universal by being so specific. It could be a play of the last 14 years, every character bearing the brunt of a system that is broken, under-resourced and failing the nation. Alec responds to this with impotent anger, Monica with empathy, for good or bad.
Corden’s last stage role, the farcical Francis Henshall in One Man, Two Guvnors, was well within his comfort zone. His character here is far more complex, although given some great funny lines at the start, but that playfulness takes us unsuspectingly into darker psychological territory.
It has shades of Penhall’s play Blue/Orange, and Corden’s character that of its psychiatric patient. He becomes more erratic, talking zealously about male victimhood but, even so, it steers clear of ever playing him as a flatly unhinged villain.
Maxwell Martin is subtly brilliant, her character’s body language changing, coiled in on herself as Alec becomes more intimidating, her voice cracking even as she hides her fear to her child on the phone.
What is striking is that Monica strives to do good, speaking of mercy and compassion, even in the face of Alec’s aggression. She sees grey in a black-and-white world, and this portrait of a good, honest MP seems so dissonant in the face of our representatives, betting-gate notwithstanding.
Directed by Matthew Warchus, the drama plays out on Rob Howell’s spare stage, its sound set to the politically infused indie dirges of Morrissey and Billy Bragg, who are maybe voices of another era but sum up our current state of malaise.
The outbursts of violence are few but they startle when they come; so are the sudden bursts of tears, which are moving.
In the end, it is not the play you imagine it to be, with no binary equation of victim/villain. Each of these characters is a victim of the system, hanging on, just – even Hart’s comical protection officer, whose outburst about his ground-down rights contains a sting.
Monica is perhaps too perfect but, amid the recent political history of sleaze, untruth and subterfuge, the notion of the “good MP” is an important reminder for 4 July.
At the Old Vic, London, until 10 August
