DESTINY

by David Edgar

The production of this play established David Edgar as a major playwright, one of the most important of the young generation of dramatists to emerge out of the 'portable' theatre movement of the late sixties.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre

96 pages, Paperback

First published May 8, 1986

About the author

David Edgar is an English playwright. He was born in Birmingham into a family with longstanding links to the theatre. His father and mother both acted at the Birmingham Rep before moving into broadcasting, and by the age of five Edgar had written his first play and performed it in a 12 seat theatre his father built for him in his back garden.

From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ed...

Reviews

[Taylor Rousselle · Rating 4 out of 5]

it’s school season baby which means a bunch of random texts with very little reviews 🫡

this play was high key bone chilling tho so imma sauce it 4 stars out of respect ✊🏻 the scene with the party guests all turning to Nazis was full of elite stage directions also, made me wish I could visualize (especially cause this old ass BBC made-for-tv film version didn’t do it justice)

[Anthony Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this a frightening play.

It depicts the rise of extremist right-wing groups in the West Midlands in the run-up to a 1970s general election by focusing on the responses of several political groupings to a strike by Asian workers in Baron Castings.

There are the Labour and Conservative candidates, and then a grouping, under a former army sergeant, Mr Turner, of groups calling themselves Nation Forward (clearly Anti-Semitic and Fascist, but which harbours a character eventually described as a Racial Trotskyite and who is therefore expelled) and Taddley Patriotic League who are primarily anti-immigrant and racist. There is also Mr Rolfe, Turner’s former regimental major, who runs a company called The Metropolitan Investment Trust, and who, at the end of the play, teams up with Kershaw, a Conservative from Central Office, and Cleaver, the guiding hand of Nation Forward. Turner, ‘the man in the street’, realises he’s a pawn and that his anxieties (and those of many like him) will be exploited by Money and Prejudice.

There is much in the play that is disquieting: the feebleness of both Conservative and Labour candidates in managing the feelings of those living and voting in Enoch Powell territory; the disillusionment of working class people following the Second World War and of Asian immigrant workers who have secured jobs but are not accorded the same treatment as white workers; the ruthlessness of the power-hungry and the ideologue; anger and divisiveness; the unlooked for and unexpected consequences of the end of Empire; the inadequacy of human beings in managing change, difference and anxiety; the nigh absence of women fulfilling any role other than a subordinate one; the ease with which demagogues can acquire influence and the failure of those with power to see that there is a nettle and to see how it might best be grasped; an expectation that the forces of law and order can always be called upon to deal with problems that could have been prevented – etc etc.

There are a couple of moments that stood out for me.

One is when one of the Asians, Prakash Pradel, who has ‘overstayed’ after finishing his studies and is therefore an illegal who will be deported, whereas Gurjeet Singh Khera, former Indian army private, is bona fide and above-board. I thought this was dramatically important in establishing that while almost all the white male characters are depicted critically, it would be wrong to suppose that all non-white characters are, by contrast, exonerated from criticism altogether. Pradel is to be admired for standing up for his rights under British law and for fronting the picket lines; but he has not altogether abided by the law himself. I realise this may be a controversial observation: it's not meant to be, but I acknowledge there may be a p.o.v I don't understand here - in which case I'm guilty of what I criticise in my next paragraph.

The other is not so much a moment as a feature of the first act. This is the series of short monologues, delivered in rhyming couplets, in which the main characters each delivers his apologia, explaining how he has come to feel and think in the way he does. These monologues may not excuse them, but it provides the basis for understanding their points of view, points of view which mainstream politicians simply have not recognised or given any thought to.

The play is compact and that makes it hard work to read, and, probably, to watch as well. It’s clearly ‘Brechtish’, and I don’t know whether the quotations at the beginning of each act would be presented in performance. I think it would sharpen an audience’s attention if they were presented. They come from the 1950 Conservative Party Manifesto, Peregrine Worsthorne, Hitler, Strasser, Goebbels, and Robert Moss. They make for alarming reading: ‘Destiny’ could be performed today with the same kind of impact as it must have had 42 years ago.

‘Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.’ Our problem – and I won’t call it a challenge since the problem seems to be that we have never found a way to challenge it – is to find a way to make the present different from the past. Perhaps, as Kurt Vonnegut pointed out, it just can’t be done.

[Mariette · Rating 3 out of 5]

So creepy.

[Karim Elmenshawy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"colonel: kipling.Don't you know it?
Take up the white man's burden."


...............Fu*k to white man's burden..........