The MP vs The Mob

The theatre-world has long given the cold shoulder to the Edwardian dramatist John Galsworthy. But in Sam Walters's spirited revival of this play from 1914, with Elgar's 1st Symphony sounding intermittent notes of musical irony, The Mob proves a radical society drama and iseerily topical.

Stephen More, Galsworthy's MP hero, sacrifices his junior ministerial post, his constituency and his family's admiration by speaking out in the Commons and elsewhere against Britain's decision to wage a popular war against some small, faraway country.

His wife and in-laws are mightily disturbed by this treachery. The analogies with Iraq or Afghanistan are, of course, not direct but the old conflict between individual conscience and governmental or imperialist conviction is appositely aired.

The weakness of the play, which Walters's production cannot altogether disguise, is its essential stagnation. There are no disputes, general or specific, about this war's morality, since the enemy country is never named.

More, played by Kevin Doyle with the right nervous intensity though sometimes at too loud a pitch for the theatre's intimate space, simply reiterates eloquent opposition to Britain's warmongering imperialism and his duty to speak his mind.

A constituency delegation nicely expresses a mixture of threats and deference. On the home front his blimpish in-laws, and "Nurse" Wreford, a superannuated nanny with a son gone to fight, express stiff-lipped disquiet or dismay, while his wife (Susie Trayling) suffers nobly then wilts: "I didn't think you'd hurt me so," she exclaims.

Unfortunately, Galsworthy's characters, whether working or upper class, are types rather than individuals and once Doyle has taken his stand there seems nowhere much for the play to go. The family does not fall apart, though below stairs trouble flares: "You know all the servants have given notice" strikes an unintentionally comic note.

There is a strikingly powerful penultimate scene in which More faces down a crowd of working-class patriots. But the glibbish, melodramatic finale, despite its critique of English hypocrisy, underlines the play's limitations as well as its thematic vitality.

The Mob