Adminstering Fear

Theatre Alibi’s vision of Graham Greene’s Ministry of Fear intrigued me. Not only is the author sadly under-rated these days (moral complexity? Catholic mysticism? No thanks, Britain’s Got Talent’s on the other side), but Green’s vision of the Second World War has a surprising contemporary resonance.

Daniel Jamieson, who adapted the book, agrees. “To Greene, it seemed that an old sense of moral and cultural order was being destroyed along with the buildings of London. Amidst the wreckage it was hard to know how to get about. New paths would have to be improvised through the chaos of tumbled values,” he says. “It has a peculiarly contemporary feel for a book written in 1942. Its flavour is very fashionable at the moment – there are no end of classy thrillers, existential detective stories, and political comedies on TV and in the bestseller lists nowadays.”

At the heart of Greene’s novels is a compassion that never descends into sentimentality: his Catholicism, tinged with rationalist agnosticism, made him seek the truth even when he couldn’t find it. He was also a deeply political writer, his apparent paranoia given authority by his employment in the secret services.

“There are deeper historical resonances that make The Ministry of Fear chime with a modern audience, adds Jamieson. “Then, as now, there was paranoia about hidden forces working within British society to destabilise and destroy it. Then, as now, there was a sense of the powerlessness of the individual in the face of great historical forces, then as now, a sense of moral confusion in the face of seismic change.”

Director Nikki Sved takes up the story. “Many aspects of the work seem particularly resonant now. The book imagines an enemy working secretly on British soil during the Second World War. There are spies at every corner and a sense that people are looking over their shoulders the whole time. As a society we’re fascinated by conspiracy theories and since 9/11 the notion of an enemy on our own soil has loomed large. This book deals with that fear – a sense that you can trust nobody, that nowhere is safe.”

Being Graham Greene, of course, there is a romantic love story alongside the secret service skullduggery, and a swathe of guilt and religious doubt. The hero, Arthur Rowe, kills his wife out of pity – an echo of the current debate around euthanasia – and then suffers from guilt. Greene’s fascination with the clash between compassion and morality and the subsequent ethical dilemmas, make his books ideal for tragedy, even if he leaves more redemptive hope than the average Euripides.

The challenge for the company will be to bring Greene’s narrative to the stage without slipping into simple story-telling, or overloading the plot with explanations. For Sved, this is avoided by subtle use of dramatic techniques. “The fact that it would appear difficult to stage is positively an attraction for us. So when an explosion is called for in the book, we’re excited about putting it on stage using actors’ bodies and props, lighting and sound. Theatre squeezes you towards finding inventive and exciting ways of showing things – that’s part of its joy. With a talented physical performer, a beautiful prop, an extraordinary piece of music, there’s almost nothing you can’t bring to life.”

Even the fast changes of location delighted Sved: “We have to treat the stage as a playground. How might you imply place? – what’s at the heart of a fairground, how do you paint it with the single sweep of a brush?”
While this may seem like a heavy evening – spies, euthanasia and warfare – Sved concludes that, despite the themes, there is plenty of laughter in The Ministry. “The material is funny! There are meaty comedy characters and surreal, eccentric humour – exquisitely observed vignettes that draw in some ways on the music hall tradition.”