Playwright: David Hare
At: New Leaf Productions, 2045 N. Lincoln Park West
Phone: 773-828-4387; $15
Runs through: March 3
By Jonathan Abarbanel
The Lincoln Park Cultural Center multi-purpose room is a neo-classical oak-paneled, domed chamber that could be a living room, courtroom or government ministry office. New Leaf Productions turns it into all the above for The Permanent Way, Sir David Hare's intense 2003 documentary drama about four deadly British railroad wrecks that tarnished Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor Party government.
Far more documentary than drama, The Permanent Way excoriates government that does too little too late, if anything at all; condemns investigations that conceal more than they reveal; satirizes officials more concerned with retaining power than conducting The People's Business; and reviles government policies that promote incompetence while diluting responsibility. Hare is perhaps the most political living playwright. Although knighted by Blair's government, he's attacked Blair onstage about Iraq as well as railway issues.
In fact, the policy leading to the rail disasters was a legacy of Thatcherism. The preceding Conservative Party regime sold off Britain's railways to private corporations, and made the astonishing decision that trains would be owned separately from tracks, thereby splitting maintenance and safety responsibilities. But the Labor Party government retained the privatization policy, going against its own manifesto, and that's why it's Hare's target.
But what's that to us? Well, hurricanes Katrina and Rita as well as the situation in Iraq are three worthy examples of the United States' planning and policy failures for which no one has accepted blame. What people want from government is rather basic, Hare says: competence, someone to be held accountable and assurances that it won't happen again. Both the Blair and Bush administrations have failed to fulfill those basic wants.
The Permanent Way is all talk—a ceaseless flow of facts, opinion and personal detail from wreck survivors and officials, played by nine actors taking multiple roles. It requires hard listening because everything is words and nothing is action, although director Brandon Ray creates a dynamic cinematic flow as cast members push each other about on wheeled office chairs lined up like rail cars. The stage itself is the floor of the room, with two rows of chairs on three sides for the audience. The acting space—perhaps 12 feet by 25 feet—is a very confined rectangle placing the actors literally in your face. Each actor repeatedly makes direct eye contact with individual audience members, and their intensity and concentration probably will rivet you. It's quite difficult to look away and you dare not nod off. Their British and Scottish dialect work is far above the Chicago standard ( or non-standard ) .
You won't learn anything fundamental you didn't already know, but The Permanent Way reminds us of what we have a right to expect—and demand—from the people to whom we grant power.