THEATRE Elusive harmony


National Anthem BABY GRAND THEATRE, BELFAST


uring the recent Commonwealth Games in Delhi, when a Northern Irish boxer took the gold medal, the song “Danny Boy” was played as he stood on the podium. This gave wider currency to a dilemma previously addressed only across the Irish Sea. In a place that has increasing political independence from the UK, what tune should be played to mark moments of local significance? “God Save the Queen” would obviously offend a significant percentage of the audience at any gathering, as would the nationalist anthem “The Soldier’s Song”. Even the “neutral” choice employed in Delhi has the disadvantage, to


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28 | THE TABLET | 6 November 2010


some ears, of using a tune called “The Londonderry Air”. The problem of what a band should strike up in the new Northern Ireland is explored in National Anthem, an energetic and scabrous first play by Colin Bateman that received its world premiere at the Baby Grand Theatre, the studio loft of the Queens Grand Opera House, as one of the highlights of the 2010 Belfast Festival.


Bateman – a surname-only style his pub- lishers unusually adopt on his dust jackets as a marketing tactic – has previously been known for comic thrillers, set in Northern Ireland during and after the Troubles, such as Murphy’s Law, Belfast Confidential and Doctor Yes. His debut drama extends the tone and concerns of his prose fiction although, in a theatrical context, inevitably brings to mind the work of Martin McDonagh (The Lieutenant of Inishmore and others): provoca- tive, scatalogical comedy involving terrorism and sectarianism. The play, directed by Rachel O’Riordan for the consistently impressive Ransom Theatre Company, is set in an office of the Northern Ireland Assembly, which has been handed over for one day to O’Hare (Miche Doherty), a set-text Catholic poet, and Miller (Stuart Graham), a Protestant musician and com- poser who has become so rich from easy listening that he lives in tax exile in Switzerland. Miller has flown in, after two decades away, to provide a tune for the lyrics to the new national anthem that O’Hare has been hired to write, the marketing idea being that these representatives of the two com- munities will work together in symbolic harmony. This is a promising conceit and Bateman


develops it with inventive neatness. There are two other presences on stage: a giant, ini- tially inanimate, toy badger, chosen by public vote as an Ulster mascot, and one of the Assembly’s PR staff. These elements – the four-hander cast is completed by Alan McKee and Niamh Quinn – become involved in a series of comic twists that arise from what happened to O’Hare and Miller during the decades of Irish violence. There has always been a constituency of


objection to Bateman’s novels on the grounds that terrorism is simply not a fit subject for farce and the play risks the same complaint but, if you can stomach this combination of content and tone, National Anthem is a sharp burlesque of genuine complications arising from the peace process. My favourite exchange comes when O’Hare nostalgically recalls the “sense of unity” he remembers during the Troubles. “Unity?” gasps Miller. “I mean, among our lot,” comes the reply. At the end, lyric sheets appear and the audi- ence is invited to sing the state refrain composed during the play. Reports suggest that some theatregoers have been refusing to rise and join in. Shyness or surviving sec- tarianism? That doubt confirms the power of the play’s plot.


Also in Belfast, I caught, downstairs on the main Grand Opera House stage, another


Stuart Graham and Miche Doherty in National Anthem


drama fictionalising a collaboration between a poet and a composer although, this time, they are real ones: W.H. Auden and Benjamin Britten, in the touring National Theatre pro- duction of Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art, highly praised here in its original NT stag- ing. This was an instructive experience for a critic, as a reminder that there are two sorts of tour. Sometimes, precisely what was seen in London is what is shown elsewhere (Derek Jacobi’s King Lear reaches Belfast from the Donmar next March in these circumstances) but, in other cases, the play is recast and redirected for its visiting gigs. The latter is what has happened with The


Habit of Art and, in this instance, what regional ticket-buyers are getting is something very different indeed from the event that sold out in London, with Desmond Barrit and Malcolm Sinclair replacing Richard Griffiths and Alex Jennings in the central roles of the literary and musical giants and the actors who are rehearsing a drama about them in a National Theatre rehearsal room. Whereas Griffiths made little attempt to impersonate Auden, Barrit is almost Bremneresque in the exactness of his delivery, although he seems to become trapped by his accent and is far less successful than his predecessor in characterising either the poet or the prima donna theatrical star. Sinclair is also much less precise than Jennings was in delineating real-life character and fictional actor. The Ulster audience greatly enjoyed the wit and ingenuity of Bennett’s writing and few will have felt short-changed, but they were unlucky not to have seen the show on the South Bank although, luckily, few will have been able to make the comparison. Mark Lawson


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