Right thinking at the National Theatre

This paper examines the construction of Britain's relationship to Europe in recent examples of avowedly 'political theatre' programmed on the stages of the National Theatre. Commissioned as a centrepiece of its autumn season, Mike Bartlett's 13 (2011) located itself in a context of crises, invoking 2011 as "a year which has seen governments fall and hundreds of thousands take to the streets" (National Theatre 2012). Performed in the following season, DV8's Can We Talk About This (2011-12), a co-production with the National, addressed itself to "multicultural policies, freedom of speech and censorship" (National Theatre 2012), citing violent political controversies emanating from northern Europe as its point of departure. Both works explicitly addressed issues of public speech and the mechanisms by which political views come to be articulated in the public sphere, appealing to notions of democracy and transnational popular engagement. This paper offers a close analysis of the works, arguing that the theatrical arguments of both are more substantially aligned to the values of US neo-imperialism. It suggests that they perform a commitment to the 'special relationship', thereby pointing towards and participating in a history of Euroscepticism in Britain.