As tragic heroes go,
former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown's downfall was one of the most
public examples of vaulting ambition gone wrong. This is prime
material for drama, which award-winning journalist and film maker
Kevin Toolis has taken full advantage of in his forthcoming Edinburgh
Festival Fringe play, The Confessions of Gordon Brown. While this
solo work performed by Ian Grieve is ostensibly about Brown, as
Toolis explains, there's a lot more going on beyond the purely
biographical.
“The first job I ever
had in 1983 was as a parliamentary press gallery reporter,” he
says, “then I did a lot of work in Northern Ireland and in the
Middle East. I encountered a lot of political structures and a lot of
political leaders, in all different shapes and forms, from terrorist
organisations, to bureaucracies. I was always very interested in
leadership, and who is the leader, and I was always very interested
in Gordon Brown. I think the play began when I was listening to BBC
radio one night, and someone said that when he was in power, Gordon
Brown was a Shakespearian tragic figure, but no-one could actually
tell you from which play. He was a combination of Richard the Second,
Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth, which in a way summed up all these
different aspects of Gordon Brown's character. He had a reputation as
something of a factionalist, some of the things he did were a bit
indecisive, but he was also a very good man. He's a much more complex
human being than Alex Salmond. I could never do The Confessions of
Alex Salmond, or even Tony Blair.
“Who we elect to be
leader, and who we choose to become leader are absolute universal
traits of society from the beginning of time. In a way you would
recognise the same things in every political manifesto. The future's
going to be better, our city shall shine upon the hill, we shall be
victorious, the pound will remain strong, and tomorrow, crucially,
the sun will rise from the east.
“So the play's about
Gordon Brown, but it also has a universal quality, I hope, which
really looks at
who are these people
we've elected leaders, why do we have such faith in them, and why are
we disappointed when they turn out to be actually pretty ordinary?”
Toolis has made
something of a life study of political structures. His book, Rebel
Hearts: Journeys Within the IRA's Soul is regarded as a definitive
study of the Irish Republican movement. Toolis has also reported
widely on conflicts in the middle east. He has also written scripts
for Universal Pictures, and in the 1990s began making documentary
films. Toolis co-founded Many Rivers Films, and recently co-produced
the feature film, Complicit, a spy thriller involving an attempted
British terror plot. As with all his work, The Confessions of Gordon
Brown is as much about belief systems than anything. Following I,
Tommy, Ian Pattison's comic study of disgraced former Socialist MSP
Tommy Sheridan, Toolis' play is the latest play to look at living
politicians rather than dead ones.
“It's not an
authorised biography,” Toolis says, “and it's certainly not a
hagiography. What I did do was to speak to large numbers of members
of the Labour Party, significant members of Brown's leadership
circle, from Douglas Alexander to Ed Balls to Damien McBride, and to
many other people who would be on the fringes of that circle. I read
every book there is about Brown, but it's not a documentary. It's an
artistic interpretation, both of the man and of the universal king,
and aspects of leadership, some of which are ancient, some of which
are very modern.”
Given Brown is still
very much alive and kicking, if keeping a low profile these days,
what, one wonders, would he make of Toolis' play?
“I've no idea,”
says Toolis. “Gordon Brown has something of a reputation for being
a thrawn king, but the play is empathetic. It's not a hatchet job.
It's a dramatic interpretation of a very important issue which
transcends Gordon Brown, and is really about what it means to be a
leader. There's a relevance there too to what's going on in Scotland
right now with the forthcoming referendum. If Scotland goes
independent, that will basically be about belief in Alex Salmond as
the undisputed leader, who will lead us into the promised land,
because we believe that we will, because he is the leader. He may be
leading us into catastrophe, so maybe people will come out and not
vote for him. The choice of leader, and the faith that the led put in
the leader is absolutely crucial. The play examines that in great
detail. We [put these leaders on a pedestal, and that's partly a
problem with us, because we want to be led.”
The Confessions of
Gordon Brown, Pleasance, Edinburgh, July 31st-August
26th
www.gordonconfesses.co.uk
www.gordonconfesses.co.uk
The Herald, July 16th 2013
ends
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