Guest Blog: 'What These Men Thought and Did Still Matters': Co-Writer Robert Khan on New Political Play THE GANG OF THREE at King's Head Theatre

Since the earliest times, theatre that speaks to the state of the nation has always been a cultural mainstay, and plays that speak to the practise of politics seem to have enduring popularity – from David Hare’s The Absence of War to Alistair Beaton’s Feelgood, along with the works of Mike Bartlett, Peter Morgan, Jonathan Maitland and of course James Graham.

Having a track record ourselves in political theatre – we’ve written a play about the Lib Dems (Coalition) and two plays about the Conservatives (Kingmaker and Brexit) – we were intrigued when a theatre producer, whose family had been involved in the formation of the SDP, pitched us the idea for a play about Labour party splits. And more precisely about the friendship and rivalry between three Cabinet heavyweights of the 1960s and 1970s: Roy Jenkins, Anthony Crosland and Denis Healey.

Work on the script started back in 2019 when the Labour party also had its worst election result in history, and then progress was further delayed by Covid. However, in 2025 the Labour party has stormed back into power, so we thought this play was an idea whose time had now come. As there also remain deep parallels between today and the politics of the 1970s: a desperate search for growth, energy crisis, inflation and cuts –  which also answered the question always posed to new writing:  ‘why now?’

As this is a play about real people we were determined to speak to people who knew them. This involved a delightful morning spent with Bill Rodgers (one of the SDP’s founders) in his London home, going through the script while he told us where we had got it right – and wrong. But we also spoke to a number of others, some of whom remain unattributed. Because one of the real responsibilities we felt was in writing about characters who have living descendants and surviving friends, and we’ve been careful to not go further than the research would justify, even if the dialogue has to be our own creation.

And we expect some possible criticism about, in part, portraying a romantic fling between Jenkins and Crosland as students, where people who knew them well are divided on whether this really happened. But any look at the letters they sent each other at the time, suggest a very close relationship – in fact they read just like love letters. And then one of those men, Roy Jenkins, would go on to decriminalise homosexuality – so what these men thought and did still matters.

And all three of them, including Denis Healey, were motivated by passion and ambition, but the conflict between what they agreed on politically and their inherent rivalry led to all sorts of decisions that undermined all of them. Not least their failure to combine, so that one of them could become Labour leader, and form an election winning alliance. Bringing that subtlety of character out on the stage is a task shared between the writing and the acting and through rehearsals that task has now been handed over to our three actors, who are making the parts their own, working with our director Kirsty Patrick Ward.

But rightly they aren’t focusing on mimicry and impressions, but on inhabiting the characters. In rehearsals, seeing Healey’s more menacing side emerge, which was publicly masked by his jolly, joking image was an insightful acting choice. And seeing the tender but troubled relationship between Jenkins and Crosland also sing, was poignant and telling.

So we have set out to hopefully write an entertaining play that the audience can take from it what political message they want. But the themes remain, can you have true friends in politics – and timelessly in political drama – do the ends justify the means?

The Gang of Three runs at King’s Head Theatre from 30 April - 1 June