Theatre
Preview: Patient No. 1, The Studio, York Theatre Royal, until May 17
By Charles Hutchinson
Donald Freed
DONALD Freed, America's most forthright political dramatist and now writer-in-residence at York Theatre Royal, is answering a call of conscience.
"People came to me saying, the country is going fascist. You wrote the play about Nixon, Secret Honour, so you're the one to write, now, about George Bush, before it's too late."
He did not rush, however.
"To simply lampoon the moral idiocy of the man in the White House, while he was still in power, would not only not help anyone to escape the gathering storm, but such a political cartoon would only serve to create a false consciousness of superiority in the elite who attend such theatre in order to mock their bogey man in effigy, instead of facing him in reality. I could not do it," he says.
Nevertheless, Donald lost sleep in the hiatus before writing Patient No. 1, which premieres at York Theatre Royal this week.
"I understood that to wait three years or more before speaking out, with the truth of whatever art I might possess, was a scandal."
But he found a solution.
"In the early morning, truth from America came, waking me up: you cannot write a work about George W Bush, in the full finitude and humanity that is the tragi-farce of his life, until he is out of power and no longer the public symbol of our shame and awe," he says.
Rehearsals for Patient No 1, with Robert Pickavance (left) as George Bush
"Suddenly, I saw it all - if that is not possible, and since waiting years to take up the challenge would be equally impossible, why, then, the answer is obvious: set the play in the near future."
Freed's stark comic satire takes place not long after Bush has vacated the Oval Office, the play taking its name of Patient No. 1 from the in-house name assigned to the former president by the psychiatric staff of an isolated private clinic where he is a patient.
Donald presented a staged reading of the play in November 2006 at the Workshop Theatre in Leeds, an occasion he will not forget. "I had to take over the part of George Bush at the last minute, and believe me it's a trip," he says.
"We did two performances, and Damian Cruden the Theatre Royal's artistic director came over to see it after all the Yorkshire theatres were invited. To meet him was to begin an adventure: he's a rare director and a rare human being."
Damian is directing the premiere in York of a play that is no mere excuse for Bush bashing. Patient No. 1 is a more complex creature.
"Is political play writing dangerous? I think it's always been dangerous, since Euripides was driven out of Athens," says Donald.
"But even in America you can write lampoons and do cartoons as much as you like about Nixon or Bush; we have great cartoon strips like Doonesbury, and when a leader is disgraced and going out of office, it's perfectly permissible to kick him when he's down.
"In fact, the elite want you to do that to protect the reputation of the USA and to restore some belief in the system for a disgusted population.
"But what's different about Secret Honour or Patient No 1 is that the audience may come rubbing their hands at the prospect of seeing Bush kicked when he's down or seeing a man like Nixon, who was so frightened, receiving some poetic justice, but that's not what the play is about.
"The public know Patient No. 1 takes place at the New Year as 2009 turns into 2010 in a psychiatric unit hidden deep in the Everglades in Florida, and when a drooling man in a bathrobe shuffles on stage, heavily medicated, they may be ready to fall about at the spectacle, but when the psychiatrist, under his breath, says My God', they know that what they're going to get is terror and pity, not parody.
"So the liberal audience that hates George Bush is being told in this play that the man they have been dining out on for eight years is no longer an excuse for their impotence.
"What I'm doing here is what is done in any serious play, whether it's Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman or George Bush, and that is using the life story for them rather than against them. Propaganda is the opposite of that."
The pity' is directed towards the human condition, not Bush.
"Bile and loathing and terror may create any number of cabaret sketches. Yet terror alone without pity does not lead to catharsis. And how in all sanity could I or any conscious American pity the smirking, cheerleading, sadistic, lethal, little, jumped up, dry drunk, war criminal who was destroying our country? Terror, hate, nausea - yes. A truthful play, without the pity of the human condition to demystify the murderous clown - no," Donald says.
He does not denigrate political plays crafted in the theatre of cruelty, parody or cabaret, having written in that vein previously. But he suggests the stakes are higher for Patient No. 1.
"It's not the right wing who will necessarily come to this play anyway; it'll be the liberated theatre class who wish to have their prejudices reinforced, though the play in no way defends George Bush for what he's done. It's not a question of who George Bush is, but who we are," he says.
Armed with this thought, he set about writing "the story of how whole nations can go mad". "Not only Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, but the United States of America, and that is no laughing matter.
"Of course, the man himself must be judged, but not by some future regime, because he failed; no, not judged by history," says the Chicago writer, who turns 75 this year.
"Bush and Blair say history will judge them, but I'm hear to tell them that playwrights will judge them. That's who they should be frightened of, not history, but playwrights."
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