April 20, 2013

Finest Hour 153, Winter 2011-12

Page 50

Theatre – Did the PM Wobble?

Three Days in May, by Ben Brown. A play starring Warren Clarke as WSC and Robert Demeger as Neville Chamberlain. Staged in Cambridge and the Trafalgar Studios, London.

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By Allen Packwood

Mr. Packwood is Director of the Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge and Executive Director of The Churchill Centre United Kingdom, and chaired the 2011 London Churchill Conference.

There is no doubting the enthusiasm of both Warren Clarke (Churchill) and Jeremy Clyde (Halifax) for their roles in this play, which opened at the Cambridge Arts Theatre. The two experienced actors visited the Archives Centre and responded knowledgeably to being shown some of the original documents from 1940, including the diaries of Jock Colville and Leo Amery, and Churchill’s speech notes.

The play is about the debates in the War Cabinet between 26 and 28 May 1940, at which Lord Halifax proposed using Mussolini (then still neutral) to explore peace terms with Germany—ground well covered by John Lukacs in his Five Days in London, though Lukacs is not credited. Playwright Ben Brown has certainly drawn dialogue from contemporary sources, and his characters quote extensively from the Cabinet minutes and the texts of Churchill’s speeches. But, of course, he has also used his imagination to fill in the gaps and speculate on the nature of the conversations between the principal protagonists, chiefly Churchill, Chamberlain and Halifax, with supporting roles by Attlee and Greenwood.

The transition from real to imaginary does not always make for smooth dialogue. Until the second half, the play feels a bit like a series of tableaux, with no sustained driving narrative and momentum. The need to give background information leads to some unrealistic conversation, not least between Churchill and Chamberlain about their views in the 1930s.

I did like the decision to use Jock Colville, one of Churchill’s private secretaries and the chronicler of these events through his diary, as the narrator. His role in ushering the others in and out of the Prime Minister’s presence helps ease the transition between scenes. Warren Clarke’s Churchill is all bulldog, glowering and stern. He conveys a man of conviction, under pressure.

Though “Colville” claims at the outset that even Churchill wobbled, it is not at all clear that Clarke’s Churchill does. He grudgingly allows Halifax to draft a memorandum, which he then opposes. Perhaps there was a bit too much anger, maybe at the expense of some of the energy and charisma that must also have been there.

Jeremy Clyde’s Halifax is superb: aristocratic, reserved, and unable to comprehend Churchill’s desire to fight when there might be an alternative, however unpalatable. Yet if Churchill is too hard, Chamberlain seems too soft. It was difficult to reconcile this portrayal of this nice, reasonable and essentially ordinary man with the hard-edged politician who dominated British politics in the late Thirties, who fought his enemies to the finish, and who remained a powerful force as Leader of the Conservative Party.

Three Days in May has some great moments and wonderful dialogue (how could it not?). It captures the claustrophobia of Whitehall and the sense of impending disaster, as Belgium falls and France teeters on the brink. It reminds me of the importance of those days, but it did not quite convince me.

Did Halifax try to blackmail Churchill? Did Churchill blackmail Chamberlain? If so, one suspects they did it far more subtly than is conveyed here. But I suspect Sir Winston would be the first to acknowledge the differ- ence between theatre and history.