DRAMA
The Observer, National Theatre
4/5
IN A NUTSHELL
An election observer comes to a West African state to rubber-stamp a flawed ballot only to exceed her mandate in a naive quest for justice.
REVIEW
In another life, Fiona Russell would be a trooper on the fete committee. She would bake tirelessly. Cajole the vicar to run the tombola. Brook no opposition to the wet sponge stocks.
She would dig in. Dig deep. Not as chairwoman - she seeks no personal gain - but a solid sort, all the same.
But this Fiona Russell (Anna Chancellor) finds herself, not elbow-deep in candy sprinkles and egg whites, but in West Africa, an independent observer at the birth of a new democracy.
Fiercely bright, ramrod straight and able, she's the sort of chap whose liberal interventions in the Third World are both well-meaning and catastrophic.
Although she's been here before - 28 elections in 12 years - this time something's different. Overlooked for the top job but very much in charge on the ground, an unfettered Fiona sees that impartial means non-committal. Yet she yearns to dig her nails into the cracked ochre earth and jolly well make a difference.
Slowly, the certainty Fiona brought to her duties, she now invests in the undoing of them. When the race for president falls into confusion, she leaps into the void, signing up voters likely to be loyal to the opposition.
Now a clucking mother of electoral machinations, Fiona bristles with indignation as a panel of judges rejects her "flat pack democracy". Even her translator Daniel (a sinuous Chuk Iwuji) acts as a counterweight to her blinkered idealism. Initially enthralled at the prospect of a cross in a box, he begins to question whether Fiona has polluted the ballot.
"I have no power here," she insists, blind to her impact.
Meanwhile, Saunders (James Fleet, wonderfully self-effacing as usual) is the coyly sinister snoop from the FO. He watches on and reports back to London where unreconstructed grandees guard the greater good.
At the heart of Matt Charman's intelligent and authentic play lies the ethical divide, not between right and wrong but between right and a different kind of right. Is it post-colonial arrogance to demand an election that meets the standards of the West, or a necessary hallmark of genuine change?
Richard Eyre's fluid direction accentuates the pull of the story ahead of the politics and, in this, he is assisted by an excellent cast, notably Cyril Nri as boisterous barman Wink (among other full-throated roles) and Lloyd Hutchinson as cynical BBC man Declan who rails bitterly at Simpson and Huw and George.
Anna Chancellor shifts Fiona's centre of gravity from head to heart with such guarded subtlety that the transformation, on completion, is as moving as it is stunning.
As she wades in too deep, she rails against those she feels have betrayed her. Yet she is blind to her truth: that she has been outmanoeuvred by the manipulations of her own desires.
The Observer is a play dense with humanity and argument. Amid its complexity, Charman and Eyre bring alive the potency and joy of the democratic process at a time when, over here, we're so weary of the whole darned thing we can't even be bothered to count our blessings.
– First published on wharf.co.uk on May 23
