Guest Blog: 'I Have Always Been Fascinated by Politics': Director Jimmy Walters on Political Re-Engagement and the European Première of 1979

The script of 1979 first came to me in 2019 and if I’m honest, despite loving the play, I wanted to run a mile from anything political at that time. The country was engulfed in division, Trump was in the White House, populism was rearing its head in country after country causing a tidal wave of emotion on all sides of the political debate, and the mere mention of the word ‘Brexit’ would result in the other person quite literally taking a step back because we still didn’t know how it would result. In short, politics was in a very ugly place and it felt like people were fed up to the back teeth with it.

But now, it feels the times are changing. The brilliant The Rest is Politics is the number 1 podcast in the country, similar podcasts such as The News Agents and BBC's Newscast are being enjoyed by millions, the younger generation are showing passion and interest and there’s a general feeling of re-engagement.

So, when thinking about my next project, it seemed the perfect choice to choose this political comedy all about a character whose tragedy is that he chose principle and decency over Machiavellian political game playing. His tragedy of wanting to do good and serve the public interest, resulted in history remembering him as a ‘forgettable blank’. A ‘complete nobody’.

Joe Clark served as Canadian prime minister for just six months in 1979. A term in office that was groundbreaking until last year when Liz Truss lasted just six weeks in Number 10. Famously outperformed by a lettuce. Clearly the absurdity of our current political climate serves as a backdrop that even the best observers and commentators such as our wonderful playwright Michael Healey can only hope to satirise almost as well as it satirises itself.

I have always been fascinated by politics. The theatre of it, the rough and tumble, and how these public servants who all go grey after less than a year in office, seem to be quite content to put up with getting three hours sleep a night, dealing with relentless abuse on social media, having their feet held to the fire on everything from the holidays they take to the juice they drink and…why? Is it because they are genuinely in it for the right reasons and because they want to make the country a better place? Or is it so that they can - as Pierre Trudeau says in our play - ‘wield a little power’? If it’s a bit of both, then at what point in their political journey does that change?

I always find stories most fascinating when they involve a character we know nothing about, who exists in a world we think we know lots about. Most Canadian friends my age haven’t even heard of Joe Clark despite the fact he was Prime Minister of the country less than 50 years ago. Equally fascinating is his wife Maureen McTeer who we meet in our story who broke the mould being one of the first feminist icons in Parliament Hill. Famously keeping her surname and being a driving force and key voice in her husband’s career.

It has been a true joy working on 1979 with my wonderful cast Samantha Coughlan, Joseph May and Ian Porter. Alan Bennett famously described comedy as being ‘a tragedy performed by a clown’, and with such a brilliantly funny script about a Conservative government desperately trying to hold onto power and with dialogue that has had me crying with laughter in rehearsals, it still asks the fundamental questions we all need to ask about a profession and a world we all depend on but one that recently has not been painting itself in glory. 

1979 runs at the Finborough Theatre from 2 - 27 January

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