Draining the Swamp: portrait of an unelected fascist

Draining the Swamp at the Burton Taylor Studio, Oxford Playhouse, on Saturday 20 April

Review by JON LEWIS

IN 2019 Brenton Tarrant shot dead multiple Muslims in mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, livestreaming one attack on Facebook.

In a recorded manifesto he states that he was inspired by the British Union of Fascism leader Sir Oswald Mosley.

Intercutting a clip of Tarrant talking about Mosley with clips of US President Donald Trump arguing that ‘draining the swamp’ is a key part of his programme, DR Hill, who as Rowland D Hill plays Mosley, suggests in Draining the Swamp that Mosley’s ideology is still relevant today.

This episodic play, directed by David Furlong for Maidenhead-based The Company, charts key moments in Mosley’s life from 1931 to 1976.

Mosley, MP for the Conservatives and then Labour before founding his own fascist party, came from an aristocratic family. He married Cimmie (Claudia Whitby-Tillott), daughter of Foreign Secretary and Viceroy of India Lord Curzon, while simultaneously having affairs with Cimmie’s sister Baba (Whitby-Tillott doubling) and Diana Guinness, formerly Mitford (Ciara Pouncett). After Cimmie’s death he marries Diana in the house of German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels with Adolf Hitler a guest.

He continues to see Baba while a civilised feud develops between both women who are united in Mosley’s fascism.

Each scene is preceded by a newsreel clip that provides some historical context for the dialogue and there are also some projections of buildings where the scenes take place. The style of the production is heroically old-fashioned with its this happened, then this happened and then this happened format. David Boyle takes on the role of William Joyce (later Lord Haw-Haw), a fellow leader in Mosley’s party and in one amusing scene, plays David Frost interviewing Mosley about his antisemitism on The Frost Report. Chris Keyna, with multiple roles, has fun with a servile fascist waiter at the Dorchester Hotel.

It feels as if Hill really wants to write a larger play, one that encompasses characters talked about but not seen – Diana’s Hitler-loving sister Unity Mitford, Winston Churchill deciding on Mosley’s imprisonment and press baron Lord Rothermere on whom Mosley relied for his publicity.

The story is fascinating, just not its theatricality.