The RemCo by Jonathan Maitland

In a tone of disdain, levity and humour, The RemCo explores the privileged and murky world of corporate pay, city politics and journalism.  More story with comment, than commentary with plot, The RemCo takes us on safari through the ins and outs of whether charismatic CEO Michael Melman should receive an £8 million pay award.  There’s always something salacious when eavesdropping through binoculars on the privileged, so distant from the world most of us inhabit that they are a rare, although ever more increasing frequent, sight stalking the international reserve of multi-million-pound salaries.

A RemCo, (remuneration committee), should you not know, and not knowing will not spoil your enjoyment of the play, is a supposedly neutral and unbiased committee set up to come to a fair conclusion on executives’ pay and bonuses.

The play’s central theme has of course the inflammatory quality of dusty brushwood and cleverly writer Jonathan Maitland has chosen not to set the tinder alight.  Instead, he has chosen wisely to be more subtle through the entertaining, if scant, plotting, appealing characterisation and dry intelligent humour.  Satire if you like.  Subtle satire.  This ensures the play’s greater likelihood of reaching those who are not part of the world of executive pay.  Moreover, written in this style it holds attention, educates and offers thought provoking insights that might otherwise be missed or ignored.

Mind you Maitland’s Sunday Times article of July 24 2022 Why bother satirising politicians? They’re doing a brilliant job themselves – could easily apply to the executives in The RemCo.  On a whim CEO Michael Melman has his wife’s dress flown out to New York at a cost of £20k which he charges to the company.  The lack of self-awareness and empathy is on a par with the politicians du jour and is better satirised than written about head-on as many do anyway.

The play is well structured and subplots interweave neatly with each other and the story arc.  In his research for this play Maitland had access to confidential minutes and although the play is fictional that access has undoubtedly contributed to the resonating reality in the detail which gives something of a true feel when listening.  As the committee gets to work the implications of a seemingly simple task, coming to mutual agreement about Michael Melman’s pay and conditions, fall foul of subterfuge, overt and covert influence and the machinations of (dis)loyalty.

The neutrality of RemCos is criticised through the lifestyle and privilege committee members enjoy in what are often, on a casual listen, throwaway lines.  A subtle example being the irk chairwoman, Judith Clapham feels if the overrunning meeting were to be reconvened next week -“Right I’m skiing next week so we will reconvene after that.”

Privilege and the sense of disconnect in the world executives inhabit is conveyed through subtle writing and delivery and yet the gentleness in the play makes it difficult for the listener to dislike the characters.  Expounding on an article The Times wrote about him Melman says:

Melman: “Although they did make a rather annoying mistake.”

Clapham: “Oh yes?”
Melman: “Yeah, they said I had a holiday home in Poole when it’s actually Poole Harbour.”

Through clear writing the play captures well the world of direct and subtle influence, in particular that staple of executive influence, the ‘saying of nothing whilst implying of everything’.

Although improper, in her view, Judith is persuaded, against her better judgement, to meet with Michael Melman in what may have been a collusion between the two men.  However, Melman finds Judith Clapham is not the naïve push over he might have been expecting.

Clapham: “Why have you got me here Michael?”

Melman: “Well, I thought it wouldn’t do any harm for us to meet.  See if there’s anything you need.  Any information or anything.”

Clapham: “I think we’re alright on that score but thank you for asking.”

Judith goes on to outfence Melman as he tries tactic after tatic to exercise influence over her and her committee.

Directing the zippy script, Emma Harding has got a quality performance of discipline, range and enjoyment from this star cast.  Deborah Findlay is strong as the brusque, efficient powerful business woman, Judith Clapham who is chairing the RemCo.  Stage and screen experienced Findlay, “possesses both a natural warmth and an emotional distance” (Ben Lawrence, in The Telegraph, 29 May 2018) which makes her perfectly cast as with ease her character inflects impatience with impeccable clarity, issues softly spoken stinging rebukes and exudes assuming, unquestionable privilege.  Lucy Doyle, plays her daughter and potential Achilles heel or is that golden opportunity, business journalist Camilla.  Sharp performances are put in by all cast and notable is the range of accents which enrich the play and allow easy character identification.  John Humphreys plays a pompous version of himself as the newsreader – perhaps not a lot of acting required.

Production values are strong and the supporting sound effects enhance the listening experience.  The restaurant scenes are particularly well done.  Intermittent music is upbeat and pushes the play along with a sense of tension that matches the plot neatly.

The RemCo is an entertaining play in itself and makes important points about city remuneration, the fickleness and self-serving nature of leadership and is a narrow snapshot of the life of the privileged. It is well worth a listen for pure enjoyment and with a view to enjoying the satirising of an elite wedge of society.

The RemCo (first broadcast in 2018) remains on BBC Sounds for a short while and is certain to be repeated soon.

What’s love got to do with it? by Tom Wainwright

What’s love got to do with it? is another winner out of the Wellcome Trust Experimental stories scheme.  It’s the comical story of the shenanigans of Tina and Turner who live in a near-future world where lives, especially romantic relationships, are curated by artificial intelligence.  ‘OMG dry and boring’ I hear you cry, but far from it.  This is an engaging, entertaining, laugh-a-minute canter through the unthought-through consequences of allowing our data to be harvested and used to direct our lives.

The plot of What’s love got to do with it? centres around the ability of an app called Q to harvest and crunch our data and consequently predict ways in which we can instigate and or improve our relationships, particularly our romantic relationships.  But, to Turner’s constant chagrin the app is too intrusive for him, “I don’t want to be told what to do anymore Tina.  I don’t want to go into a bar and for my watch to tell me what to drink.  And for it to be right!”

It’s not long before Turner persuades Tina to turn off the Q app.

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I don’t want to know what I doing.  That’s the whole point.”

“Is it?”

“I think so.”

“Alright then Romeo.”

At the count of three the Q app is no longer part of their lives except “It’s saying if I make you delete Q there’s a 67% probability that you’ll have an affair with a guy called Rob.  At your work.”  Thus, is the first moment of their descent into life and relationships in the raw reality of being human with no app to guide you.

Both freed from the app’s accurate clinical notifications, they are adrift now.  Adrift as humans.  Humans who have had their lives led for them by an app for years.  Lost, directionless and reliant on their humanity to live their lives they must negotiate a plethora of life’s ordinariness with ever increasing disastrous consequences.  A comedic feast for the onlooking listener.  The question is, will they persist, freed from the all-intrusive app, or hook up again, to have their lives curated!

Although the feel of the play is light and entertaining with many laugh-out-loud lines and situations it is a cleverly written piece on an important theme – the “dataverse”.  That is, one of the “seismic, epoch defining revolutions” that is silently happening all around us and to which we are mostly complicit and yet oblivious as our penchant for convenience compels us to check the tick box and send ourselves and our futures to goodness knows what.  Thinking back on how this all came to be, the Welsh narrator tells us, “People found that they were more interested in convenience and safety than they were in abstract notions of privacy.  Give me your data, I’ll make your life nice and comfortable.  It was a win-win situation.  Sort of.”

The narrator, Welsh actress, Gwyneth Keyworth, has the perfect accent, pitch and tone and her part achieves that perfect, yet rare, balance between intrusion and distance from the play’s action.  Regular readers of this column know I am far from being a fan of narrators in audio drama but in What’s love got to do with it? the all-knowing narrator’s rapport with the listener is conspiratorial, juicy almost, and lures us in, with ease, as a co-eavesdropper, to the world of Tina and Turner.

Production values are high in What’s love got to do with it? with sound separation (stereo) of particular note along with the inclusion of character reactions in the background.  These small devices, including sound effects, contribute significantly to the atmosphere of the play and go a long way to drawing the listener into the world of the characters.

Georgie Fuller plays ‘something of a bossy’ Tina, “now take me to bed or lose me for ever”, who endures much of the brunt of life without Q.  Edward Easton plays well the forlorn, exasperated romantic who wants a deeper non-AI human connection with Tina.  Their scenes are sharp and the source of much of the humour in the play.  The pair are well matched opposite each other and their sparky, sparring relationship contrasts well with the flat, in a good sense, cynical wisdom of the narrator.

The play pings along apace and praise must go to the director, Anne Isger for the depth and range the actors find and lifting the excellently written humour from the page.

Writer Tom Wainwright has risen to the challenge set by the Wellcome Trust and produced a play that takes a serious topic and explores it with humour and creativity.  The cleverness of the play’s double-entendre and punning title, the lead characters’ names and other devices reflect an intelligence in the writing and production through the play.  Undoubtedly the play will reach many who do not, and would not, without listening, think of their data being used in ways that are not in their interests.  For that alone the Wellcome Trust, sponsor of many creative endeavours on future worlds, deserves much praise.  As the Wellcome Trust put it, “We tell stories about health and human experience. Our words and pictures make connections, provoke new thinking and share lived experiences.” To my mind the subtlety of the use of story to inform, educate and entertain listeners on serious topics is as much superior, as it is different, from being lectured on the topic.  Not only that but it is of course much more enjoyable.

This reviewer is not privy to the roles of Dr Ricky Nathvani and Maxine Mackintosh in the production of the play but surmises that they are Wellcome Trust employees exercising an overview on the science, themes and goals of the stories scheme.

Will Tina and Turner be able to stand the realities of raw relationships or will they capitulate and reinstall the Q app?  The answer to that, can be had, only on listening to this excellent and entertaining play.

What’s love got to do with it? remains on BBC Sounds.

A Dog in the Fight by Hugh Costello

After Michael is made redundant and Annie has a fling with an old flame, the pair leave Dublin for a more sedate and peaceful life in the “beautiful west of Ireland … a peaceful part of the world, [where] nothing dramatic happens here, most of the time.”  But out of the blue, literally, an Orlan-10 Russian spy drone crashes into Michael’s greenhouse bringing global politics and domestic life into direct conflict in this gripping political thriller from prodigious writer Hugh Costello.

Now you might be thinking, ‘political thriller’, sure I get more than my fill of depressing politics in the news why would I want to listen to that.  The answer is that Costello’s work is first and foremost an enjoyable story that pursues the consequences of a drone crash in a garden.  What would you do, you may well ask, especially when a government clean-up team is hot on the heels of the crash.  Beyond that this creative play rewards the close listener with subplots that explore trust, neutrality, decision-making and other themes common to personal and geopolitical relationships.  As ever Anglo-Irish relations lurk and loom in Costello’s plays.

Whilst addressing serious themes the play does so with skilful and playful humour accompanied by the occasional laugh-out-loud moment.  Michael was an intense greenhouse grower of tomatoes and herbs and when the government clean- up team swoop in to tidy up the destruction from the brought down drone, mysterious official, Paula remarks “That explains why your lawn looked like a pizza topping.”

Feeling pressed into responding to what has happened Michael makes a video that goes viral, with the ‘wrong’ people in the ‘wrong’ country.  Whilst the play is far from being a farce, it is creative, entertaining and provides much comic substance.

Pressures build on the couple with Annie’s father having something of a late mid-life crisis through which he is none-the-less able to impart vital advice to her, “seek out these opportunities to know yourself better.  Don’t settle for a life of making do” he tells her.  A stranger with a metal detector turns up and turns out to be an agitator who will rile everyone he encounters.  And then there’s a song and dance with the signing of the NDA which brings scrutiny, tension and trouble.  As the pressures build, they have an impact on Michael and Annie’s relationship and require deep thought and carry the potential for significant consequences.

Characterisation is strong in the play with perhaps Paula, played by Frances Tomelty who clearly relished the role, being particularly finely written.  She is an effortless representation of the ‘assumption and swoop’ of an untrustworthy government that will, without consideration, and employing deceit, serve its own cause.  The feigned, light and off-hand wish that Annie’s new teaching job might be made permanent masks the plethora of sinister machinations of behind-the-scenes power.

The play is well structured, across a linear narrative, a Costello trademark.  The clarity of structure contributes to the pace.  The plot and dialogue move swiftly with purpose and hold the listener’s engagement firmly.  But don’t be deceived.  There are layers of depth to Costello’s plays for those that seek such rewards.  Although overtly political Costello’s plays are not preachy.  Whilst the peer into steep perspectives they don’t shove you off the cliff and yet the listener, keen on those dimensions, is not left with doubt as to where the characters, and perhaps the writer, stand in relation to current affairs.

Costello has the extraordinary talent of turning out plays of depth, quality and high entertainment value on the prevailing political zeitgeist in what seems to be a super fast turnaround.  There’s something of the fine product about his plays, akin perhaps to how a master glass blower might admire a vase he has just made.  Production companies and broadcasters must love the reliability, speed and quality with which he can write such plays, which I’m certain must come from a love of the genre.

Actors embrace his dialogue with ease and directors (in this case, Eoin O’Callaghan) find their task a breeze with a structure that explicates itself easily into the recording studio and through to the speakers in cars, kitchens and headphones on enjoyable walks.  I suspect Frances Tumelty, Simone Kirby, Jonathan Forbes, Stephen Hogan and Mark Lambert enjoyed the experience and that shines through in the performance.

Whether you enjoy A Dog in the Fight as an entertaining story about a shot down drone, a commentary on Irish neutrality or an observation on Britain’s centuries old relationship with Ireland, there is much to relish.

A Dog in the Fight remains available on BBC Sounds.

The Crossing by Hugh Costello is reviewed here – https://rb.gy/fyc83