Like Copenhagen, Democracy – the third and final offering in Sheffield Theatres’ Michael Frayn season – examines a flashpoint in 20th century history through the prism of the characters involved. This time it’s cold war politics as the play follows the rise and fall of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, a charismatic Nobel Prize winner with a dangerous penchant for women and wine. The first left-wing leader to emerge after years of politic stalemate, Brandt’s common touch and out-stretched hand to the east promises a new age of reconciliation either side of the iron curtain. The Stasi certainly hope so but just to make sure they plant an agent, Günter Guillaume – as inconspicuous as a hat stand – in Brandt’s office.
But it’s not just spies Brandt has to deal with, his own party is equally divisive caught between old socialists and middle-ground political pragmatists. William Hoyner is quite brilliant as Wehner, or ‘Uncle Herbert’, a sinister version of Tony Benn who does the dirty work necessary to keep ‘number one’s’ hands clean. Brandt also presides over an uneasy coalition with the Liberals, an arrangement about as stable ‘an egg balanced on a billiard cue’ – a line drawing a wry chuckle of recognition from the audience that must have been missing from the play’s 2003 debut.
Amidst this realpolitik it’s the unlikely friendship between Brandt and Guillaume that provides the dramatic motor of the piece. At first the bespectacled effusive figure is a minor irritation to the Chancellor – after remarking he looks like ‘ the owner of a shop selling pornography’ the leader asks for him to redeployed away from his office. However, in his unassuming way Guillaume slowly makes himself invaluable to Brandt. His constant companion while campaigning, the keeper of his attaché case and, when the premiere suffers from his sudden bouts of depression, his nursemaid bringing the ‘red medicine’ of which Brandt drinks copious bottles. They each become more beholden to the other, like a mutual Stockholm syndrome, making the eventual revelation of Guillaume’s treachery a betrayal for them both.
Paul Miller’s robust production boasts two strong central performances, Aidan McArdle is a fantasically naïve spy whose surveillance is clouded by the rose-tinted spectacles he wears in the company of the great man. Patrick Drury plays Brandt as flawed figurehead, capable of eloquent silences, meaningful gestures but also the debilitating self-doubt of a man who has manufactured himself to be the right leader for the political moment. Simon Daw’s set is an impressive matrix of public and private space with the Bundestag in the middle, Brandt’s office on one side and Arno, Guillaume’s East German contact, marooned on an island made of the Berlin wall on the other.
The piece once again demonstrates Frayn’s brilliant penmanship – beautifully crafted lines that alternate between personal testimony and historical moment. If there is something unsatisfying about all this elegiac prose it’s that it often prioritises narration and recollection over dialogue and drama. In a play populated entirely by men in suits of various shades of brown one could sometimes wish for a bit less soliloquising and a bit more action – but then you could say the same about politics in general. There’s no doubt this production showcases an assured director, a talented cast and a masterful writer. That said, given this is a season devoted to one writer, it would have been great to show Frayn’s real range by programming the knicker-wettingly funny über-farce Noises Off.
Democracy and the rest of the Michael Frayn Season run until 31 March