Losing Grip: Jingo at the Finborough

Losing Grip: Jingo at the Finborough

21 July, 2008
by: Jimmy

Charles Wood's Jingo was last produced in 1975 and for at least the first half of this production it seems to have been somewhat unjustly overlooked. Though it may not offer much of a coherent or interesting insight into the Singapore debacle of 1942 (in which 130, 000 British soldiers surrendered to a Japanese force less than half their size) as an exercise in genre mashing a Cowardesque sitting-room farce with a more barbed End of Empire satire, it is not without merit.

Up until the interval, in the tiny Finborough venue, the Primavera production did a good job of breathing life into a well-crafted, if very traditional, knockabout love triangle, which included some strong set-piece speeches, delivered with gusto and elan. Anthony Howell, as a soldier confronted in bitter middle age by his old flame's new marriage, seemed especially able to merge the comic and sympathetic aspects of his role. He moved a touch beyond Wood's stereotypes. The production also scored a hit by way of the silent, dignified presence of the couple's oriental servants, witnesses to and victims of, the casual racism and vapid self-indulgence of their employers.

Sadly however, both the play and the production rather unravel after the break. The programme, stuffed full of apercus on everything from the financial basis of upper-crust marriages, to verses from fin de siècle British Imperial ditties, to the contemporary US stranglehold over the Iraqi cucumber market, gives some clue to the number of targets aimed at in Jingo. Alas the grasp exceeds the reach as one proselytising declamation follows another, the jokes run dry and sentimentality infects the narrative. Everything becomes somewhat static as each actor braces themselves to address the audience on the next British failing. The final scene, in which the surrender seems to play out as the backdrop to the love story, is almost as ill-conceived as the one that marred the recent Pearl Harbour film. It is also painfully drawn out.

In probably the best sceptical historical novel about Singapore debacle, JG Farrell [The Singapore Grip, 1978] describes how General Percival, charged with the city's defence is seized by a "cruel conviction: namely, that the Governor now sitting opposite him was not real. Nor was it only the Governor who suffered this disability: his wife did, too, and his staff, and indeed, everyone here in the Singapore Club and, come to that, outside. For it had suddenly dawned on Percival that he was the victim of a cruel and elaborate charade: that the moment he left the Governor's presence the fellow would cease to exist..."

The unreality of the British Empire (of which you couldn't really cite a better example than the entirely artificial construction of Singapore), is Farrell's great theme. His works suggest that the delusions necessary for running an Empire (especially that of racial superiority) would eventually, inevitably, manifest themselves in the thoughts and behavior of its delegated managers. In Wood's play nothing this subtle occurs: there is no equivalent actualization of the consequences of Empire, on the individuals forced to run it. And though there is some poetic pamphleteering there is also very little insight into the lives of British subjects. Singapore was a disaster by the very fact of its existence and not by the manner of its government. The play's faults stem from this tendency to put the cart in front of the horse and it is something no production will ever quite be able to counteract without significant revisions to the text.

Nevertheless this is still a production worth a look if you're in the area. There's almost nothing worth watching at the cinema this month for a start. And besides you're unlikely to ever see Jingo produced again.

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Jimmy