Witness for the Prosecution by Agatha Christie
I went to County Hall to see Lucy Bailey’s Witness for the Prosecution. The play’s action largely takes place in an Old Bailey court-room with a couple of scenes in the defence counsel’s chambers. Designer, William Dudley, might not have done much to stage the play in County Hall’s Council Chamber, but whatever he did do he did brilliantly, because it proved to be ideally and dramatically suited to be transformed into a magnificent Old Bailey court-room. The Chamber was built for political debate, with majority and minority parties benches, a Mayoral dais and press gallery splendidly reflecting the prosecution and defence, judge and clerks of the court and jury seats required for staging a court-room drama. The single-purpose, somewhat claustrophobic, controlled environment of a political chamber also has its obvious parallels with the court-room.
For those unaware of the plot, the play has a very clever, typically Agatha Christie, twist. However, the twists and turns of the plot do demand a remarkable performance from Leonard Vole, the defendant, played by Jack McMullen. He needs to be thrillingly and seductively attractive to women of all ages and at the same time to be naïve and of Machiavellian cunning; unfortunately, McMullen’s acting did not quite have the range to make his character totally credible. Actually, of course, the problems really are the demands of the script. Agatha Christie’s work is to be enjoyed for the clever twists and turns of the plot and not necessarily for the credibility of the demands she places on her characters.
In any event, the central character, defence counsel, Sir Wilfred Roberts QC, is beautifully played by David Yelland and it is his character, which is the central lynchpin of the plot. Indeed, Sir Wilfred is the tragic hero of the piece; well intentioned, polished and sophisticated, elegant and fearsomely clever in a nice aristocratic manner he is made a buffoon and a loser by a scoundrel. The powerful last scene lost nothing by being so well known to many of the audience.
The setting and the dramatic conclusion, the moral dilemmas posed by the story and Yelland’s acting made for a very enjoyable theatrical performance in an interestingly new environment.
Go early and spend 20 minutes walking around the outside of the Chamber, reading the marbled engraved names of the leaders of the London County Council (LCC), the Greater London Council (GLC) and the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) – most of them now sadly merely names in the records of the past, but some still talked of today – most notably Ken Livingstone, but there is also Chris Chataway (pacemaker along with Chris Brasher for Roger Bannister’s Four Minute Mile but also briefly a Tory Leader of the ILEA) and Sir Ashley Bramall. Less well known but with a very small connection to me, one can also find Norman Prichard, later Sir Norman – as well as being Chairman of the LCC he was also a Labour councillor for Latchmere ward – my ward, then of Battersea and now of Wandsworth.
Witness for the Prosecution runs at County Hall until January and I heartily recommend it although I may have been slightly swayed in that I worked in County Hall for 23 years and it was, therefore, a bit of a sentimental journey. I look forward to seeing many more dramas, especially courtroom ones, staged there in future.
Just a word of warning! If you go in the cheaper seats (but not exactly cheap), in what used to be the public gallery, both view and accessibility need to be checked in advance!
In Praise of Ken Livingstone
For those for whom the 1980s are already ancient history, I thought it worthwhile to say a bit about Ken. Last month’s election was one too far – perhaps two elections too far, but let’s make no mistake he has been a giant of London politics for the best part of 40 years. It is difficult to remember now, just how popular he was for most of those years.
Apart from his roles both as a Lambeth councillor and an MP he has been the London city boss for 13 years, from 1981-86 as the Leader of the Greater London Council (GLC) and as Mayor from 2000-2008. He defeated the official Labour candidate, Frank Dobson, in 2000 (making him one of the most successful independent candidates ever in British electoral history) and massively outpolled Margaret Thatcher in all the London popularity polls in the late 80s.
But he also has a stream of achievements behind him, which would be the envy of many politicians. He almost invented today’s cosmopolitan London, with his emphasis on the Rainbow Coalition and a 24:7 city life-style. Certainly his espousal of equal opportunities, almost a joke at the beginning of the 80s, has made it standard practice in even the most conservative of establishments. Livingstone transformed London bus services and was the first and only person to reduce rather than enhance the dominance of cars on London roads, both with lower fares and the congestion charge.
Even his “mistakes” usually had a positive outcome. Too far back for many to remember but he invited the IRA (Irish Republican Army) to talks at what was then County Hall. The right-wing press slaughtered him for talking to, and giving respectability, to terrorists. But Thatcher followed not long after and 10 years later Tony Blair brought a level of accommodation and peace to Northern Ireland – but Ken had blazed the trail. Perhaps his finest single moment was his speech immediately following the dreadful London 7/7 bombings, when he stood up for a multi-cultural, cosmopolitan London which would not be cowed by terrorism and blood.
His opening sentence on the day of the bombing was; “This city is the greatest in the world, because people live side-by-side in harmony – and Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. … We are here because people from around the world come to London; people live in London, to fulfil their dreams and to achieve their potential. They choose to come to London, as so many have come before, because they come to be free”.
Some had cause to regret his war with Margaret Thatcher, after all I along with perhaps 20,000 others were made redundant as a consequence of it and her consequent abolition of the GLC. But in the end he won and he was right. London needed some form of regional government and although the Mayor and GLA is not the model I would have supported (nor was it the model that he supported in the early Blair years) it is now clearly here to stay, commanding as it does bi-partisan support.
If Boris achieves half as much he will be doing well – something I hope he remembers at the opening of the Olympics, which would not be coming to London without Ken’s participation – along with many others.
Tony Belton
Tony Belton 