The Guardian Weekly 09.10.09 33
A new blond
bounces into
the Queen Vic
Ontelevision
A
ffably, like a bear about
to order cocoa with a side
order of marmalade sand-
wiches, Boris Johnson,
the mayor of London,
shambled into the Queen Vic. It was
one of those spit-and-cough celebrity
appearances that both sides think is
good for business while viewers plait
their toes and hum a bit. The mayor
might have been one of the many
long-lost Mitchells who turn up in East
Enders (BBC1) on a regular basis. The
rule is that Mitchell women are abun-
dantly blonde and Mitchell men bru-
tally bald. Boris is a genetic variation as
he is a bouncy blond like Peggy Mitch-
ell. Darwin would have been fascinated.
The mayor beamed at Barbara Wind-
sor or, as he put it later, "This landmark
of our culture". Here is a man who
knows his Carry on Camping. Whipping
a business card from his top pocket ("If
you have any ideas how I could help
Walford, here is my card"), he vanished
in a puff of smoke. Not that there is a
puff of smoke in the Vic these days.
Captive for 18 years: The Jaycee Lee
Story (Channel 4) was a disturbingly
good bit of journalism by Nick London.
A month ago Jaycee Lee Dugard was
found alive in Antioch with two pale
withdrawn teenagers who had her
abductor's china blue eyes.
Antioch, a dormitory town, had
become a sanctuary for paedophiles be-
cause, ironically enough, Megan's Law
prevented them living near schools.
And because the police and probation
services were so flaccid. As the sheep-
ish sheriff said: "Organisationally, we
should have been more inquisitive.
Turned over a rock or two."
Carl Probyn, Jaycee's stepfather, is
molten with rage. He saw her abducted
("I heard the scream. I saw the dust. I
realised I couldn't catch 'em") and de-
scribed, accurately, the make of car and
the abductors. He was and is articulate.
"Basically, my wife collapsed. I im-
mediately started doing interviews to
get Jaycee's name out there, to get her
picture out there from day one." He
was the chief witness and for 18 years
also the prime suspect. His marriage
collapsed: "We had a great marriage. It's
just our hearts got ripped out."
Phillip Garrido and his wife, Nancy,
are in jail. Jaycee, her mother and her
daughters are somewhere surrounded
with psychologists. Probyn was asked
if he'd ever considered suicide. He said:
"Probably weekly."
Nancy Banks-Smith
Finance is back in fashion ... Enron with Samuel West as Jeffrey Skilling, left, Tim PigottSmith as
Ken Lay and Amanda Drew as Claudia Roe; below David Hare Tristram Kenton/Robert Yager
Hytner[artisticdirectoroftheNational]firstinvited
me to tackle the financial crisis on 31 March and I
spent an intense period researching it. The piece
is being written up to the last minute, but I find it
cheering that a big subsidised company can go back
to this kind of experiment."
Hare's own questioning self is represented as
a character on stage. He explains: "I'm trying to
break through the protective attitudes of the bank-
ers, who argue that it was a recession just like any
other, that we have to reconstitute the system as it
wasandthatthereisnoneedtoquestionorexamine
the very basis of capitalism. It was Alan Greenspan,
the former Federal Reserve chairman, who admit-
ted that `the whole intellectual framework has col-
lapsed'. That's what I'm trying to explore."
Althoughtheirapproachesdiffer,HareandPrebble
agreeonmanypoints.Oneisthatdifficultyofexplain-
ing the technicalities of money; both pay tribute to
Michael Frayn as a writer capable of clarifying com-
plexsystems.SaysHare:"Youwouldn'thavethought
that an audience could understand nuclear physics,
or the intricacies of postwar German politics until
Frayn wrote Copenhagen and Democracy."
Both playwrights think money is a subject that
has been unjustly ignored by modern theatre.
"Oddly enough," says Hare, "about a year ago,
I went to a lecture at the LSE [London School of
Economics] given by Howard Davies, then
On the arts blog Tate removes naked
Brooke Shields picture after police visit
guardian.co.uk/artanddesign
director of the CBI, where he expressed surprise
abouthowlittlewaswrittenaboutthephenomenon
of the City and the place of capitalism in the culture.
Obviously, that's changing, with the new Sebastian
Faulks novel, A Week in December, and Michael
Moore's new film.
"But I've always felt rather lonely in writing
about the connection between finance and poli-
tics: the whole point of my play Gethsemane was
to show how politics has got boxed into a corner by
its dependence on fundraisers. I also passionately
believe in theatre's capacity to give an overview of
a big subject. When I wrote Stuff Happens, I wanted
to explain the origins of the Iraq war in a way I felt
journalism at the time wasn't doing. And I've now
tackled the financial crisis partly in order to combat
my own ignorance, but also because theatre is the
ideal place to explore national and global issues.
There is something about the heightened, collec-
tive experience of theatre that makes it possible to
assimilate ideas and information."
Gratifying as it is to find two playwrights more
interestedinanalysingmoneythanmakingit,Ihope
Enron and The Power of Yes are the start of some-
thing rather than the conclusion. Theatre, with its
mix of private and public funding, is the ideal place
inwhichtoconfrontthecontradictionsofcapitalism
� as long as it remembers Dryden's injunction that
drama, like poetry, "only instructs as it delights".

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