EDINBURGH 2015 - BWW Reviews: TONY'S LAST TAPE, Pleasance Courtyard, August 22 2015

Tony's Last Tape, by Andy Barrett, takes style and situation from Krapp's Last Tape, and reinvents it by replacing its protagonist with the late, great left-wing legend Tony Benn. One might be justified in imagining that the Edinburgh Fringe is the only place you could expect to see a show melding Samuel Beckett to the life of a veteran (what they call socialists when they're old and dead according to the central character) Labour MP, but the Nottingham Playhouse production has already had successful runs in both Nottingham and London before arriving in Edinburgh this August.

Deciding to finally wind down after more than six decades of political involvement, the prolific diarist makes one final tape of his thoughts, on everything from memories of visiting the USSR to the hidden dangers of consuming too many bananas. Philip Bretherton plays the late Benn, managing to capture a lot of his trademarks while avoiding impressions. The old age acting didn't quite come off as an authentic 88-year-old, seeming at times either exaggerated or inconsistent, though he is more successful at bringing out the fire in Benn when the character gets started on the rousing rhetoric that made him so recognisable.

There were a number of amusing moments that portrayed Benn's mischievious and anarchic side, whether by playing around with a megaphone voicechanger, pretending he's just been elected Prime Minister, or his Mission Impossible style adventures to get a plaque erected in the Houses of Parliament to suffragette Emily Davison. Equally, there is poignancy here too in the portrayal of a man who has proven unwilling and unable to walk away from politics; for instance, when he imagines what it would be like to see someone else walking around in his late wife's clothes that she insisted be donated to a charity shop. The play also portrays much of his motivation as stemming from the wartime death of his elder brother, an event that landed Benn with the hereditary peerage he fought so hard to renounce.

It is possible that the show may be more effective if it distanced itself just a little further from its absurdist inspiration. It felt like a segment about Benn's mother's funeral was included merely because of a corresponding section of Krapp's Last Tape, and slacker patches towards the beginning seemed to owe more to Beckett's oft-meandering scripts than to more modern pacing. It has, however, found itself neatly contemporary in its topic and some of its references. Benn was something of a mentor to the man likely to be the next leader of the Labour party, and there is definitely a thought of Jeremy Corbyn in the minds of the audience, when Benn recalls condemnation of his 1980s positions to be "unelectable", with Labour instead going down the route of "listening exercises" dreamt up by a campaign guru.

Mostly a show for those who have an interest in politics, to fully appreciate the show you would at least need to be brought to laughter by comments such as Jim Callaghan opining that he really feels 1979 will be his year. While it could use a tighter script, Tony's Last Tape is an interesting concept and an engaging portrayal of one of the great figures of recent British politics.

Tony's Last Tape is at the Pleasance Courtyard at 1215 until August 30th.

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