Theatre review: The New Real

My relationship with David Edgar's plays has been mixed: I think my still-strong memories of enjoying Pentecost in the '90s make me always want to give his new work a try, but the RSC's most-commissioned modern writer was also responsible for the notoriously dreary Written on the Heart, and after last week's meh Here In America I felt a bit of trepidation towards the second of his premieres this autumn. The New Real is also described by the blurb as both "epic" and "panoramic," so they're really making sure you know it's going to be long. Still, my first show at Stratford's The Other Place since it was serving as The Courtyard twelve years ago turns out to be flawed, but worth checking out. Edgar returns to Eastern Europe and an unnamed former Soviet state, in a story spanning the last 22 years and looking at the question that has been worrying many political playwrights: How did politics move so far to the Right and so far from reality in that time?

Edgar makes a fairly convincing argument that the practice of polling to identify highly specific demographics and then target the ones who could win someone an election, which had become very accurate by the time the story starts in 2002, created an overconfidence that let a dangerous new politics slip through the net.

After her partnership with another campaign strategist breaks down following his use of dirty tactics, Rachel (Martina Laird) accepts a job running an election campaign for the Eastern European state's opposition party, who are trying to unseat a Russian-sponsored president. Rachel manages to install the socially liberal but economically Thatcherite Liudmilla (Patrycja Kujawska,) very nearly having to start a revolution to do so after the incumbent unsubtly rigs the election result.

Two terms later and with Liudmilla losing popularity between the 2008 financial crash and party scandals, her former ally Petr (Roderick Hill) runs against her, employing Rachel's former partner Larry (Lloyd Owen) as his strategist - who quickly tricks Rachel into giving away some of her former candidate's weaknesses. So Rachel returns to a very different campaign, and Larry's dirty tricks create a new monster out of Petr, and a new model for seducing a frustrated part of the electorate.

It's certainly a sweeping story and Holly Race Roughan's production manages to keep it flowing, with the action moving speedily on and off Alex Lowde's traverse stage. It's not quite as able to cover up some of the unevenness of the story though - although I felt the overall themes were wrapped up well, the first act is so focused on the initial election that the multiple time jumps after the interval can feel like we're not quite in the same narrative we were following. Daon Broni feels like he's not got much to work with to bring to life two strategists who represent different ways foreign elections were viewed (first as a humanitarian mission, then as a branding opportunity) over the first two decades of the century.

With a lot of the characters being former allies turned rivals, Edgar also tries to give us a glimpse of rivals turning allies to hopefully reverse this trend, but Edyta Budnik and Ziggy Heath's storyline is spread so thinly over the two decades we've forgotten their characters by each time they resurface. More effective is the sparing use of Sergo Vares' shadowy, Putin-sponsored fixer, who's never been neutralised quite as thoroughly as you'd hope.

But the main thread comes from Jodie McNee's Caro, the pollster whose pinpoint accuracy at defining demographics goes from guaranteed vote-winner to catastrophe: As Liudmilla's divergent social and economic politics foreshadowed, thinking that someone's beliefs on one matter must imply their beliefs on another is a fatal flaw that Caro spots too late to do anything about. In the end Edgar's point feels strongly made and more than plausible; it's a shame that along the way the play doesn't always make you feel confident he knows where he's taking us.

The New Real by David Edgar is booking until the 2nd of November at The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon.

Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Ikin Yum.