When Winston Went to War with the Wireless (NHB Modern Plays)

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The simple set is made up of a variety of objects which are used to create live foley which accompanies the action on stage. It’s a magical nod to the medium that plays such an important role in this story. Ben and Max Ringham’s sound design is bold and often surprising; a scene in the House of Commons sounds rowdily realistic, despite only a handful of characters being involved. AUDIO-DESCRIBED PERFORMANCE – Saturday 8 July 2.30pm, touch tour at 1pm (audio described by VocalEyes) The play takes place in spring 1926. The General Strike has been called. On the right, there’s a climate of, says Thorne, “absolute paranoia” that a Bolshevik revolution is on its way. Winston Churchill, then chancellor, sets up the British Gazette as the voice of the Conservative government. He also wants to grab the BBC, then a mere four years old, and bring it under full state control. What he means by that last comment is that the BBC was in its infancy. It was a tiny startup, staffed by a group of young war veterans, misfits, impresarios, intellectuals and engineers. But Reith, a visionary with immense ambition – matched by Churchill’s immense personal ambition – understood that broadcasting could be a great democratic power. “Most of the good things of this world are badly distributed and most people have to go without them,” he wrote. “Wireless … may be shared by all alike … the wealthy and the poor listen simultaneously … there is no first and third class.”

Directed by Katy Rudd (Ocean at the End of the Lane, Eureka Day) and based on a true story, the play is a gripping and timely examination of the BBC’s independence during the 1926 General Strike. It started with impact, I loved the live foley on stage throughout and the performances were strong, but at multiple points I found my mind wandering and the play dragging. The first half stronger than the second, where all excitement seemed to be gone. It’s a fascinating window into now little-remembered events, and Katy Rudd’s zippy production feels the most at ease while depicting the dawn of the BBC: a ragtag group of eccentrics who genuinely had no idea how to run a broadcaster - because literally nobody anywhere had ever done it before - balancing ethical dilemmas about news coverage with hokey light entertainment shows. He is torn apart by his pursuit of principle, of giving a fair airing on the new BBC radio service, to opposition politicians and the Unions, and his desire to kowtow to a Government that could wrest control of the BBC away from him.If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Reith strikes a win by featuring trade union views but loses to the government’s edict not to air a conciliatory speech by the archbishop of Canterbury. The BBC’s future as a corporation stands in the balance if he does not bend to their will. On TV, she has appeared in Drop the Dead Donkey (BAFTA nomination), The Crown (Netflix) and Channel 4’s The Windsors, playing Camilla. In 1920s Britain, there were two popular news sources: The British Gazette, edited by Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill, and the British Broadcasting Company, led by John Reith. As the pair demand control, they must decide what counts as “truth.” Stephen Campbell Moore as Reith, ten years younger than the youngest of his six siblings, son of a Presbyterian Minister and educated at Glasgow Academy, prays frequently and is shown as a man obsessed by an early friendship and love for Charlie Bowser (Luke Newberry) a relationship which Reith’s daughter Marista Leishman was convinced was homosexual. His own marriage to Muriel (Mariam Hague) seems to have had difficulties. He has a prominent scar on his left cheek after being wounded in the First World War which at the time he regretted because he was wearing a new tunic.

I wrote about Reith and the General Strike in This New Noise, my book about the BBC, and I still can’t decide what I really think about the episode. On the one hand, Reith did not hand over the BBC to Churchill, and he did broadcast communiques from the TUC as well as the government. On the other, he made some serious compromises – for example, bowing to pressure from prime minister Stanley Baldwin not to allow Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour leader, access to the airwaves.

When Winston Went to War with the Wireless opens with a sharp, spectral tableaux of coal miners toiling. Soon, those miners are downing tools and the Trades Union Congress has called a general strike, paralysing Britain. The fledgling BBC, founded only three years before by John Reith, finds itself on the horns of a dilemma – should it report the objective truth of the strike, police brutality and all? Or should it dance with the devil (well, Stanley Baldwin’s Tories) and be used as a government mouthpiece to help quell a putative Bolshevik revolution?

A fascinating segment of history... the play creates a shimmering sense of the past... Thorne triumphantly uses real history to create a compelling drama that is both amusing, touching and revealing' WhatsOnStage Jun 13, 2023 7:27:03 GMT justinj said:It was ok. After seeing patriots last week, during which I was engrossed throughout, I was hoping for more of the same. Unfortunately I found my mind wandering during a lot of this. Likewise, the ethical compromises Reith makes to appease the government are fascinating, but feel like they’d have worked better in a show more explicitly about the Beeb. And of course there are plenty of juicy echoes with our current politics, as strikes disrupt the country, the BBC and government remain uneasy with each other, and a Churchill tribute act dominates our politics. But I’m not sure that makes this play illuminatingper se, it simply points out how little things have changed.

The Guardian's Arifa Akbar gave the play three stars out of five, observing that "the story comes in fast, evocative scenes with dialogue delivering lots of information, entertainingly, but not with enough probing" and praised Rudd's direction while stating that "ultimately, we are not sure what the play is saying." [3]

Fascinating as this roiling moment of history is, Thorne thumps home the modern-day parallels in rather too heavy-handed a fashion. We really do understand all the echoes and compromises of our contemporary media landscape (in a fascinating programme essay, Andrew Marr compares the current situation between the government and the BBC to an “abusive relationship”) and would be happy to let 1926 sit undisturbed in its own time period. There’s also an interesting if incongruous sub-plot about Reith’s conflicted personal life that is begging to be allowed the breathing space of an entire drama of its own. Sound is married to visuals in arresting ways too on Laura Hopkins’ clever set and flashes of light (design by Howard Hudson with video projection by Andrzej Goulding) reveal the strike itself. It is this delight in and celebration of sound, so apt for a play about the power of radio, that makes the play worth seeing.He was recently formally diagnosed as autistic, after a doctor wrote to his agent suggesting as much, having heard him on Desert Island Discs. It has been hugely helpful, he says, and not just to give him an excuse to get out of going to the parties he had always inexplicably hated. “It’s helped a lot with my history,” he says. “It’s helped me put things in a box – scars – that I didn’t understand before.” Stuff from school? Yes, he says, and other things. “I don’t think I was happy until I was 32.” That was when he met his wife, Rachel. This production contains strobe lighting, haze, the smoking of a vapour cigar, and the appearance and firing of a gun Lloyd Evans An unreliable history: When Winston Went to War with the Wireless, at the Donmar, reviewed Plus: at the Theatre Royal, Windsor, a provocative tale of an unlikely friendship