‘Good, meaty leisure’ – When Winston Went to War with the Wireless

Britain’s General Strike in 1926 lasted 9 days.

As the coolly indifferent prime minister Stanley Baldwin held agency, his chancellor and ‘enforcer’ Winston Churchill needed to persuade John Reith of the newly shaped British Broadcasting Company to toe the federal government line and to not give the oxygen of publicity to the unions.

Reith needed broadcasting to stay neutral as the one remaining news outlet was the federal government produced British Gazette.

The battle of wills is carried out largely within the BBC studio the place technicians rattle, clink and gurgle varied home objects to create sound results.

It’s a intelligent theatrical system, framing a critical debate on the pressures that the federal government can placed on media establishments by ideological argument and outright threats.

Like a latter day Harley Granville Barker, playwright Jack Thorne permits the controversy loads of air with out descending to diatribe and is even-handed in his remedy of Churchill (Adrian Scarborough) whose character is cast by wartime experiences and Reith (Stephen Campbell-Moore) whose personal Christian ideas are compromised by his secretive Wildean way of life.

Good, meaty leisure superbly performed by all, notably Ravin J Ganatra because the Archbishop of Canterbury (“There is no ‘greater good’. There is only ‘good’”) and Laura Rogers as Clemmie, Churchill’s spunky spouse.

The casting of Haydn Gwynne as Baldwin is a mischievous allusion to her function as a chief minister nearer to her personal gender.

When Winston Went to War with the Wireless, Donmar Theatre till July 29. Tickets: 020 3282 3808