Mike Bartlett on Albion, Brexit and Covid: 'national identity is critical to coming out of this'
Mike Bartlett’s 2017 play Albion returned to London’s Almeida theatre in February, the week after Britain left the EU. It didn’t mention Brexit but the story reflected its mournful divisions. Then the Covid-19 pandemic struck and dwarfed the drama’s concerns of nationhood, patriotism and nostalgic notions of Englishness.
Or did it? “Some were saying in the early stages of Covid that the virus had blown those divisions out of the water,” says Bartlett. “Actually, I don’t think it has … Everything that has happened in regard to questions of national identity has become fundamental to what we want to do coming out of this.”
The production’s director, Rupert Goold, reflected that “plays, like plants, grow over time”. Albion has gathered nuance each time it is repotted. It features a metropolitan, middle-class family who move to the countryside. Britain’s relationship with Europe was still seen by some to hang in the balance when it was first staged. By the time of its 2020 revival, Bartlett felt it to be a very different play.
It is now set to be broadcast by the BBC and feels newly relevant once again, Bartlett thinks, especially after the fallout from George Floyd’s killing, which has thrown definitions of nationhood and national identity into further dispute: “Boris Johnson was using war metaphors and world war two rhetoric about a country coming together [in the midst of the pandemic] but that sits uneasily with the Black Lives Matter movement. There is the idea that this narrative is not only irrelevant but that its history – and its statutes – are offensive. The very thing that a lot of white people are proud of is what others are saying is to be ashamed of, so it’s problematic and the unpicking will take time. [Until then] the competition over a national identity will be as hot an issue, just as fought for, as it was before.”
The nation’s soil plays a vital part in the drama; its indomitable matriarch, Audrey, played by Victoria Hamilton, plants a garden that becomes a potent symbol of love – for her son who has died fighting for his country but also, by extension, her land. The connective tissue between land and national identity contains all the weight of Britain’s colonial history, says Bartlett. It is there in that incontrovertibly British hymn, Jerusalem, in which “even Jesus has been colonised – we’ve got him here [in our green and pleasant land]”. Bartlett refers to Salman Rushdie’s definition of home – as a place of “roots” that connect us to the land – but also of the “routes” or journeys that make a new land our home. He feels this lies at the heart of the conflict – a Britishness that stems from the idea that “we have been here” versus that which involves immigrant journeys.
Several others plays by Bartlett have been brought back in the past year, from Snowflake at the Kiln to Love, Love, Love (whose run at the Lyric Hammersmith was cut short by Covid-19). On screen, his series Doctor Foster has been hugely successful, while his play King Charles III has also been adapted for TV. His BBC drama Life, expected to air this year, stars Hamilton, Alison Steadman and Adrian Lester, and revolves around a shared house in Manchester. Again it seems to untangle the issues of our day in its exploration of community and what we owe to other people. “We are all atomised, especially recently, but even before lockdown. It’s about people finding connections and also how we form a community when society doesn’t believe in it.”
So much of his work burns with urgent themes – Earthquakes in London looked at climate change, 13 at religious belief in the 21st century and Game at video-game violence. These issues never set the plays’ agenda in themselves, says Bartlett, but are foregrounded by the more complicated drama of human relationships. Albion sought to explore the emotional aspects of the arguments around Britishness. “It’s not an academic debate about the EU, it’s absolutely fundamental to who people feel they are in the world. I felt it important to understand the emotional weight of it.”
Would he describe Albion as a family drama or political play? “The phrase I stumble over is ‘political play’. I do think there’s a thrill to seeing a play that talks about what we’re talking about now. I love writing about politics and power. But the reason I stumble is because it conjures a more didactic, opinion-based drama that forces politics on the audience. We have already had to listen to so many opinions in politics and the media.
Bartlett became a writer partly to escape his own world. “The reason I loved theatre was because I could imagine myself in other people’s shoes. I was not that interested in me.” The original plan was to go into directing, which may be why he is such a willing collaborator. “That sense of company is vital to me. I love writing but I don’t write many stage directions. It’s for other people to make it real. [The playwright] Sarah Kane used to talk about the provocation to collaborate, so you write impossible stage directions and in response to that the director has to think of imaginative solutions. Earthquakes in London was full of stage directions which asked the impossible – at one point a foetus turns to the camera in a baby scan and screams – and in Cock there is direction for no naturalistic movement. James [Macdonald], its director, said, ‘How do we do nothing?’”
Bartlett’s lockdown in Oxfordshire, with his wife and their children, has been pleasant enough. “I have a garden, I’m alive and healthy. We have been lucky to keep working remotely and to be able to enjoy a bit more time with the children. I’ve been doing some home schooling and finding that maths is more difficult than I anticipated. A lot of people will treasure this time with family – or at least, the lucky ones will.” He is acutely aware of the wider tensions that now lie exposed. “One thing the lockdown has done is magnify existing issues – of mental health, inequality, class, race, the value of the NHS.”
Has he had the appetite for online theatre? “I have young children and getting to the theatre was quite hard so having it online is great.” He contests the suggestion that it’s a “lesser” form, citing the TV dramas of the 1970s, like I Claudius, which were staged like plays. “It’s half play and half TV drama. I was already feeling that there was a form there that was interesting.”
Related: Albion review – Mike Bartlett's thorny study of politics and patriotism
They open up access, too, for audiences who can’t travel or afford the ticket prices. There has been a lot of resistance to recording live performance, he says. “With standup comedy, which often goes out at prime time, there is one person, one set. All you are doing is listening to that one performer but it sustains itself. No one worries whether it is live or if you lose something from seeing it on screen. The lockdown has made me think we should be less precious about putting [live theatre] on film. It’s not the same thing as being there, but that’s OK.”
When theatres reopen, what kind of drama does he want to make? “I want to see less plays documenting experiences that we’ve just been through and more stories that engage with the other side of this,” he says. “The question of what world we want to create.”
