Imagine the Mother of all Parliaments in full agreement on every pressing issue of the day. Full cooperation and compliance. Ideology and historical precedent, class and status left at the Speaker’s door-step. Deference and diplomacy ever to the fore. If you imagine that then time to trash your stash and catch up on some YouTube Spitting Image/Alan B’stard archives then because you are living in cuckoo-land.
Now it is time to go 70s retro and nurture your nasty-side, cuddle you curdled-cynicism and revel in the Machiavellian vampire swamp that machinates is This House. It truly did become the Mother of all Parliaments.
1974. The UK faces economic crisis and a hung parliament. In a culture hostile to cooperation, it’s a period when votes are won or lost by one, when there are fist fights in the bars and when sick MPs are carried through the lobby to register their vote. It’s a time when a staggering number of politicians die, and the building creaks under idiosyncrasies and arcane traditions.
Set in the engine rooms of Westminster, This House strips politics down to the practical realities of those behind the scenes; the whips who roll up their sleeves and on occasion bend the rules to shepherd and coerce a diverse chorus of MPs within the Mother of all Parliaments.
The Festival Theatre is one of the few venues on the UK tour of This House offering on-stage seating so that a portion of the audience will sit on the green Houses of Parliament benches, as though they are members of the house. A “house of commons style bar” will be provided for the on-stage audience during the interval.
Festival Theatre 13-29 Nicolson St, EH8 9FT
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
