Playing the martyrs

Political theatre can be a minefield of clunky dialogue, shoehorned messages and simplistic politics. Having navigated the obstacles in Edinburgh last year with their acclaimed staging of Robert Tressell’s classic tale, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Townsend Productions have once again impressed critics and audiences with a play whose subject matter had the potential to be a touch heavy, to say the least.

We Will Be Free! is the story of The Tolpuddle Martyrs, a group of 19th century agricultural labourers who set up a society of friends to protect their interests and were exiled to an Australian penal colony for their trouble. 

Faced with the challenge of mounting a play that spanned the globe using a cast of two in the space of an hour, writer and actor Neil Gore turned to the concept of the mummers play. For the uninitiated, mumming is a form of low-budget folk theatre using overblown costumes, small troupes of actors and a standard format of good versus evil. Its popularity during the Martyrs' era meant this provided the ideal frame for the story, says Gore: “We wanted to find something on which to hang the narrative and spent a lot of time doing research [into the history of the Martyrs]. It is a very complex story simplified, so that it does not get too bogged down in politics.”

Producer Louise Townsend says that she has not been surprised by the popularity of the show’s unique format.

“Our intention is to tell people things in an accessible way," she explains. "Not everyone can go to the theatre.” After their Edinburgh run, Gore and Townsend will be touring the play across the UK at an eclectic mix of venues, from regional theatres to working men’s clubs – and, most notably, the 2013 Trade Union Congress in Bournemouth. The costs of the production were in part funded by donations from a number of trade unions, and Gore is candid about the political subtext of the show.

“Trade unionism is relevant whether you’re in work or not," he says. "At the moment the whole movement is in a crisis – we’re in a world of statistics and counter statistics, and we’ve been led down this road. It’s madness.”

This desire to show the human side of the workers’ movement is evident in We Will Be Free!'s finale, which unexpectedly tugs at the heartstrings.

“If you want to gain something, look to the emotions”, says Gore. “I heard Tony Benn speak here in Edinburgh the other day and he said that if you want to change things, you have to encourage people. You do that through art. This is why Michael Gove is such a clever man. He wants creative arts out of the education system because it is the means by which people learn to question and debate things.”

The decision to focus on the story's female characters posed an added challenge, as these figures hardly feature in historical records or previous dramatisations. "There was nothing at all really," says actress Liz Eves, who plays the wife of one of the transported men. "But what happened to them all came out of necessity. They were starving.” 

The universality of the families’ plight is what makes the play so relevant, and the team behind We Will Be Free! make no bones about it. “Our work is political," says Townsend, "and there is a definite need for it at this time.”