Theatre review:When Winston Went to War With the Wireless

There's a tendency for previously obscure ideas or stories to get multiple interpretations all at once. Sometimes the coincidence just seems random, at others there's an obvious logic to it: You can see why events of recent years might inspire multiple writers to look back at a historical event when a Conservative government attempted to control the output of the BBC. Six months ago I'd never heard of the feud between Winston Churchill and the BBC's first Director General, John Reith. Then earlier this year I listened to a radio drama about the subject, and within weeks it had been announced that Jack Thorne would be premiering his own take on the subject at the Donald and Margot Warehouse. Having been left with altogether too many W tiles, Thorne presents When Winston Went to War With the Wireless.

In 1926, in solidarity with the miners whose talks with the government had broken down, the TUC announced a General Strike, which saw everyone from transport workers to printers down tools indefinitely.

The former causes chaos on the streets, but it's the latter that presents an opportunity for Reith (Stephen Campbell Moore.) His radio station had until then been limited in how much news they could broadcast, because of fears that free news straight to people's homes would cripple the newspaper industry. With the papers unable to print, he seizes the chance to increase the radio news coverage, but this comes with a major caveat: The government wants them to toe their line in how they report on the strike, and Churchill (Adrian Scarborough,) then Chancellor of the Exchequer, is sent in as enforcer.

Churchill is the scenery-chewing star draw (his party colleagues discuss to what extent his cigar-chomping, drunken image is all part of him creating a legend around himself,) although a scene where Thorne seems to entirely forget what century he's writing about and has him talk about "earworms" and "bandwidth" is pretty bizarre. But it's Reith who is the focus of Thorne's play, in all his moral dilemmas and internal contradictions (famously a devoutly religious man, the play also shows him haunted by memories of his great love affair with Luke Newberry's Charlie Bowser.)

Campbell Moore gives us a likeably conflicted character, whose values inform the publicly-owned company he's been put in charge of and wants to represent everyone (the BBC's core values are still described as "Reithian,") but is at times an unlikely hero: It takes head engineer Peter Eckersley (Shubham Saraf) to point out the squalor British workers live in and are trying to fight their way out of, and convince him to fight to get their side of the story on the airwaves. When Churchill makes a threat to the BBC's very existence, it's one that's familiar from politicians who want it as a mouthpiece to this day.

To be honest I was never entirely drawn into the story, which I feel is pulled into too many different directions: It's already a chaotic and violent couple of weeks in 20th century history, so the dive into Reith's struggle with his sexuality and past are an extra theme too far, and I never felt like it was satisfactorily tied into the rest of the story. But if there's a lot going on Katy Rudd's production marshals it entertainingly: The back wall in Laura Hopkins' design is a series of stepped platforms on which the cast create foley sound effects to accompany the action. We get snatches of popular songs and comedy sketches that would have been played at the time, and Kevin McMonagle's music-hall entertainer provides an interval entertainment with a song about piddling (truly, the BBC has dumbed down since its early glory days.) Perhaps Haydn Gwynne thought she might get to play another Prime Minister some day, but I doubt she would have guessed it would be Stanley Baldwin.

So there's a lot that's interesting going on here, but it never quite coalesced for me into a compelling whole. This is Thorne's second premiere in as many months, and for my money it's the weaker of the pair.

When Winston Went to War With the Wireless by Jack Thorne is booking until the 29th of July at the Donmar Warehouse.

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.