Someone who hadn’t seen the rest of the show would be forgiven for thinking that it had been an evening of rabble-rousing demagogy Moore risks irritating people by taking on such airs. The tone of parts of his two bestsellers, Stupid White Men and Dude, Where’s My Country?, and of previous shows he’s done veers dangerously close to emotional manipulation. As satirist-cum- activist, he steers a tricky path between wit and arrogance. He starts with the classic stand-up strategy of attacking the most entertaining issue of the day – Prince Charles – by responding to heckles about his lateness with: “Well, there are rumours, but I can’t tell you what they are.” He then attempts to tie up the Orange sponsorship banner – contrived, but amusing.Michael Moore can resort to very basic humour to grab his audience: “Bush is an idiot!” he exclaims at one point. But this crass declaration gets a huge laugh, and leads into what is actually an astute, if not original argument that Blair’s support of the attack on Iraq is more reprehensible than Bush’s.Moore’s talent is in steering popular indignation or derision at world leaders towards more intelligent analysis, while using what is largely the language of the pub: “I have racked my brain here, trying to work out why Blair did this…” One may wonder how false this naivety is, but it is effective.At other points, the weakness of Moore’s political attitude shows. He is essentially a moderate hoping for a democratic victory at the next presidential election. He doesn’t think the British centre-left should be so scared of the Tories: “They’re not coming back, OK!” But he can’t answer a heckler’s remark that “plenty of people still vote Tory, they just don’t come to your shows!”.Continually invoking his own success as evidence that most Americans agree with him, he appears excessively optimistic.
Lucky, then, that he’s got great comic timing and a fine absurdist sense of humour. Denmark should “lose its right to be Scandinavian” as punishment for supporting the war. Howard Dean is “not that liberal – he supports the death penalty”.Moore is often accused of being smug or hypocritical But he’s not pretending to be anything he isn’t. Highly media- savvy, he knows popularity in today’s world depends on brand identity, and makes much of his own persona accordingly. His appearance as a fat American in a baseball cap is part of a strategy that says, “you don’t have to be a wacko lefty to be up in arms about this stuff”. It may irritate middle-class Brits, but it’s clearly working.. Gregory Burke has drawn on his experiences as a teenager living in Gibraltar for his new rites-of-passage play, The Straits.
It’s the follow-up to the smash hit, Gagarin Way, his blackly hilarious comedy about a heist and a protest against global capitalism that go spectacularly wrong. If you did not know better, you would say that The Straits has all the hallmarks of a debut drama, with its semi-autobiographical male initiation story, and you would hail it as an apprentice piece of significant promise. It’s the play’s misfortune Gagarin Way has so emphatically stolen its thunder. These teenage boys – all the sons of low-ranking military personnel in the British forces there – have just been shooting octopuses, but it’s clear that their testosterone-charged aggressiveness is not going to be satisfied with killing sea-creatures. Darren (Calum Callaghan) is the runty, susceptible newcomer, natural prey for Doink, whose cocky charisma and underlying insecurity are strikingly conveyed by James Marchant. This latter competes with his sidekick, the decent and more intelligent Jock (the excellent Stephen Wight) for the attentions of Tracy (Jenny Platt), Darren’s sexily assured sister.
But, even with her interventions, there is still a strange feel of Lord of the Flies in John Tiffany’s tightly focused production.Unfolding in May 1982, the piece offers a potentially fresh and intriguing angle on the Falklands campaign, that conflict seen now from the perspective of youths, stuck miles away on another outpost of empire, who want to prove their manhood. They take out some of their frustration and knee-jerk racism on the local “spics” at the annual “anti-English day” brawl. But Burke’s attempt to counterpoint the coming-of-age machismo rituals on the Rock with the concurrent war in the South Atlantic comes across as forced at times and lacking in any original insights. When we hear that Doink’s brother is serving on HMS Sheffield, it’s possible to guess most of the rest of the proceedings.Apart that is, for the admirable way that the play refuses to make these experiences redemptive.
