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The Permanent Way
A compelling work of documentary drama from Britain's "greatest living political playwright" (New Statesman).
In a last-ditch attempt to swing an election that they didn't expect to win, Britain's Conservative Party government made the fateful decision to privatize the country's railway system. Twelve years later, the results of that choice are disturbingly unpredictable schedules, hemorrhaging costs, and the fateful deaths of several passengers after a succession of disastrous crashes. In this classic achievement of Brechtian, agit-prop theatrics, award-winning playwright David Hare gathers together the first-hand accounts of those most intimately involved--from every level of the system. The result is a fascinating parable described by Guardian theater critic Michael Billington as a "dazzling oral mosaic" and a "vitally necessary piece of theatre" which poses a compelling metaphor for the state of the world at large.
In a last-ditch attempt to swing an election that they didn't expect to win, Britain's Conservative Party government made the fateful decision to privatize the country's railway system. Twelve years later, the results of that choice are disturbingly unpredictable schedules, hemorrhaging costs, and the fateful deaths of several passengers after a succession of disastrous crashes. In this classic achievement of Brechtian, agit-prop theatrics, award-winning playwright David Hare gathers together the first-hand accounts of those most intimately involved--from every level of the system. The result is a fascinating parable described by Guardian theater critic Michael Billington as a "dazzling oral mosaic" and a "vitally necessary piece of theatre" which poses a compelling metaphor for the state of the world at large.
96 pages, Paperback
First published March 16, 2005
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About the author
David Hare
118 books84 followersSir David Hare (born 5 June 1947) is an English playwright, screenwriter and theatre and film director. Most notable for his stage work, Hare has also enjoyed great success with films, receiving two Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for writing The Hours in 2002, based on the novel written by Michael Cunningham, and The Reader in 2008, based on the novel of the same name written by Bernhard Schlink.
On West End, he had his greatest success with the plays Plenty, which he adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep in 1985, Racing Demon (1990), Skylight (1997), and Amy's View (1998). The four plays ran on Broadway in 1982–83, 1996, 1998 and 1999 respectively, earning Hare three Tony Award nominations for Best Play for the first three and two Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. Other notable projects on stage include A Map of the World, Pravda, Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War and The Vertical Hour. He wrote screenplays for the film Wetherby and the BBC drama Page Eight (2011).
As of 2013, Hare has received two Academy Award nominations, three Golden Globe Award nominations, three Tony Award nominations and has won a BAFTA Award, a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and two Laurence Olivier Awards. He has also been awarded several critics' awards such as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and received the Golden Bear in 1985. He was knighted in 1998.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ha...
On West End, he had his greatest success with the plays Plenty, which he adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep in 1985, Racing Demon (1990), Skylight (1997), and Amy's View (1998). The four plays ran on Broadway in 1982–83, 1996, 1998 and 1999 respectively, earning Hare three Tony Award nominations for Best Play for the first three and two Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. Other notable projects on stage include A Map of the World, Pravda, Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War and The Vertical Hour. He wrote screenplays for the film Wetherby and the BBC drama Page Eight (2011).
As of 2013, Hare has received two Academy Award nominations, three Golden Globe Award nominations, three Tony Award nominations and has won a BAFTA Award, a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and two Laurence Olivier Awards. He has also been awarded several critics' awards such as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and received the Golden Bear in 1985. He was knighted in 1998.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ha...
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
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February 6, 2018Popular London tourist attraction, Highgate cemetery , is a private business, a brave band of mid-nineteenth century entrepreneurs brilliantly realising that people are always dying, and that the decline of the Anglican Church due to immigration (Karl Marx) and crises of faith (George Elliot) meant that this left a increasing number of people with nowhere to be buried, opened up their own cemetery, unfortunately they failed to fully grasp the consequences of their own insight and inevitably maintenance costs grew steadily to exceed funeral income until the business went bust.
David Hare tells a similar story in his play, The Permanent Way which I saw at the National Theatre possibly at some time in 2004. It was a fun production with a handful of stacking chairs rearranged by the cast to become a railway carriage, a courtroom, a section of railway, an office or so on as required, costumes were similarly suggested by a hard hat, a briefcase, clipboard or hi-vis jacket giving the production an air of a raid on the dressing up box by a politicised bunch of adults. I thought it was fun.
The play is about the privatisation of the UK railways in 1991 and its results. To go back in time the British Conservative party has a slight problem in having had an iconic and successful Prime Minister in the late Mrs Thatcher, the problem is that subsequent leaders have felt the need to if not out-Thatcher Thatcher than to be at least no less Thatcherite than she was believed to have been. This is manifested not in a harmless bit of political theatre such as the wearing of blue skirt suits and having permed hair but generally in the stated desired to privatise something. In 1991 it was the turn of the railways. The historically minded may decide to recall that originally all of Britain's railways were private businesses, and one might think that in theory it would have been fairly uncontroversial to re-establish them as a private business, however it was decided that because free markets are great because of free competition, therefore the more competition there was the greater the market would be, and the more everybody would be a winner. So rather than just set it up as one single private company there was a basic division between a company (railtrack) which owned the tracks and a number of companies which operated rail services which ran along the tracks, the latter made money from passengers the former by charging the operating companies to use the eponymous permanent way. The problem was that Railtrack was a private company, it needed good financial results to maintain its share price and a with them a sufficiency of sparking wine at the AGM, and the best way of achieving better than expected financial results was to spend less on the repair and maintenance of the railways. Eventually this began to have the kind of results you might expect, fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, because relatively few people died in the resulting train derailments it never became sufficiently scandalous to push the government to take action until Railtrack's share price fell through the floor at which point with some embarrassment that company was renationalised.
The play runs through all of this as a theatrical documentary based on interviews, with British Transport Police, victims, Managers and workers of the companies involved, that the playwright conducted, naturally the playwright has a story to tell, as all documentaries do, though in his defence his story was plainly different to the dominant political narrative which prevented action from being taken earlier. But he managed I felt to turn a fairly grim tale of share price management into something engaging and lively.
David Hare tells a similar story in his play, The Permanent Way which I saw at the National Theatre possibly at some time in 2004. It was a fun production with a handful of stacking chairs rearranged by the cast to become a railway carriage, a courtroom, a section of railway, an office or so on as required, costumes were similarly suggested by a hard hat, a briefcase, clipboard or hi-vis jacket giving the production an air of a raid on the dressing up box by a politicised bunch of adults. I thought it was fun.
The play is about the privatisation of the UK railways in 1991 and its results. To go back in time the British Conservative party has a slight problem in having had an iconic and successful Prime Minister in the late Mrs Thatcher, the problem is that subsequent leaders have felt the need to if not out-Thatcher Thatcher than to be at least no less Thatcherite than she was believed to have been. This is manifested not in a harmless bit of political theatre such as the wearing of blue skirt suits and having permed hair but generally in the stated desired to privatise something. In 1991 it was the turn of the railways. The historically minded may decide to recall that originally all of Britain's railways were private businesses, and one might think that in theory it would have been fairly uncontroversial to re-establish them as a private business, however it was decided that because free markets are great because of free competition, therefore the more competition there was the greater the market would be, and the more everybody would be a winner. So rather than just set it up as one single private company there was a basic division between a company (railtrack) which owned the tracks and a number of companies which operated rail services which ran along the tracks, the latter made money from passengers the former by charging the operating companies to use the eponymous permanent way. The problem was that Railtrack was a private company, it needed good financial results to maintain its share price and a with them a sufficiency of sparking wine at the AGM, and the best way of achieving better than expected financial results was to spend less on the repair and maintenance of the railways. Eventually this began to have the kind of results you might expect, fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, because relatively few people died in the resulting train derailments it never became sufficiently scandalous to push the government to take action until Railtrack's share price fell through the floor at which point with some embarrassment that company was renationalised.
The play runs through all of this as a theatrical documentary based on interviews, with British Transport Police, victims, Managers and workers of the companies involved, that the playwright conducted, naturally the playwright has a story to tell, as all documentaries do, though in his defence his story was plainly different to the dominant political narrative which prevented action from being taken earlier. But he managed I felt to turn a fairly grim tale of share price management into something engaging and lively.
May 19, 2022
this was surprisingly interesting
December 24, 2013
fabulous. I cried so much. Well illustrated freaky confrontation between mortal little humans and the corporate monster.
December 12, 2016
This is another of Hare's interview plays which looks at the sell off of British Rail and the consequences of that sell off. Biting, pointed and poignant.
August 20, 2020
3.5 stars. An interesting piece of documentary theatre about an issue I was already interested in (the privatisation of the public railway). David Hare is good at chronicling recent social history, but this play perhaps fails somewhat as a piece of political theatre. Stuff Happens is better at that.
The play successfully captures the personal stories of the railway tragedies, how many people died and some of their stories. This is great for left-wing audience members who believe the government should take more responsibility for public safety, pressurising corporations through regulation and legislation. It also points out that publicly trading corporations are focused on maximising the prices of their shares, rather than public safety measures. However, it doesn't really touch on the fundamental economic problem that privatised railways do not work. They aren't more efficient, but more expensive. They don't create competition, but private monopolies. We have significantly more expensive railways than anywhere else in the world. It has one throwaway line about us being at least twice as expensive as anywhere else, but I feel this play was more interested in left-wing, humanitarian sympathy than convincing right-wing, pro-privatisation people that their arguments, when put into practice, clearly don't work.
I guess this is just a case of me worrying that David Hare is preaching to the choir, rather than attempting to change view points. I agree that the personal stories were important and tragic, but Tories don't ride trains... Make it personal AND economic. A little more information about how fairs increased proportional to wages while elsewhere other countries were reducing their ticket prices. How you can ride a hundred miles in Rome on two one euro tickets bought on the day but the same journey to London and back can cost £70 in the UK. Maybe I'm making this too political, but surely that's the point of verbatim, documentary theatre about a political issue?
The play successfully captures the personal stories of the railway tragedies, how many people died and some of their stories. This is great for left-wing audience members who believe the government should take more responsibility for public safety, pressurising corporations through regulation and legislation. It also points out that publicly trading corporations are focused on maximising the prices of their shares, rather than public safety measures. However, it doesn't really touch on the fundamental economic problem that privatised railways do not work. They aren't more efficient, but more expensive. They don't create competition, but private monopolies. We have significantly more expensive railways than anywhere else in the world. It has one throwaway line about us being at least twice as expensive as anywhere else, but I feel this play was more interested in left-wing, humanitarian sympathy than convincing right-wing, pro-privatisation people that their arguments, when put into practice, clearly don't work.
I guess this is just a case of me worrying that David Hare is preaching to the choir, rather than attempting to change view points. I agree that the personal stories were important and tragic, but Tories don't ride trains... Make it personal AND economic. A little more information about how fairs increased proportional to wages while elsewhere other countries were reducing their ticket prices. How you can ride a hundred miles in Rome on two one euro tickets bought on the day but the same journey to London and back can cost £70 in the UK. Maybe I'm making this too political, but surely that's the point of verbatim, documentary theatre about a political issue?
February 24, 2023
Όλα τα έργα του Ντέιβιντ Χέαρ, είναι πολιτικά. Και αυτό δεν αποτελεί εξαίρεση. Ο Ντέιβιντ Χέαρ σε αυτό το θεατρικό έργο, που μοιάζει πιο πολύ με ντοκιμαντέρ, μας παρουσιάζει την ιδιωτικοποίηση των τρένων στην Μεγάλη Βρετανία, που έλαβε χώρα το 1991 επί πρωθυπουργίας Μέιτζορ. Είναι ένα πρωτότυπο έργο, αφού στην σκηνή ( και στις σελίδες του αντίστοιχου βιβλίου) εμφανίζονται πολλά πρόσωπα: μηχανικοί σιδηροδρόμων, εκπρόσωποι τύπου, δημοσιογράφοι, τραπεζίτες, απλοί επιβάτες, συγγενείς των πεθαμένων από ατυχηματα σιδηροδρομικά κλπ. Όλοι αυτοί εμφανίζονται και ο καθένας αφηγείται την δική του ιστορία των σιδηροδρόμων, μετά την ιδιωτικοποίηση. Ο συγγραφέας αναφέρεται στα τέσσερα μεγάλα σιδηροδρομικά ατυχήματα που έλαβαν χώρα από το 1997 έως το 2002 σε διάφορα μέρη της Βρετανίας. Κανείς δεν ανέλαβε την ευθύνη: ούτε οι πολιτικοί ( αφού ήταν ιδιωτικά και όχι κρατικά) ούτε οι ιδιωτικές εταιρείες που διοικούσαν τις εν λόγω γραμμές ούτε οι τράπεζες ( που είχαν στην ιδιοκτησία τους τους συρμούς). Οι μοναδικοί υπεύθυνοι ήταν οι οδηγοί! Συγκινητικές οι φωνές των συγγενών των θυμάτων, που νιώθουν ελάχιστη ανακούφιση μόνο και μόνο επειδή διηγούνται ξανά και ξανά τις αναμνήσεις τους από τους θανόντες συγγενείς τους. Όπως πάντα, ο Ντέιβιντ Χέαρ, δίνει λόγο στους απλούς πολίτες. Τους κλείνει το μάτι και τους υπενθυμίζει ότι εν τέλει, αυτοί οι ίδιοι είναι συνυπεύθυνοι για τα λάθη που έγιναν.
March 4, 2024
Lots of trains. Lies and corruption. In summary TFL is shit 🚂💩
December 10, 2009
Strange to have finished this right after seeing the Anna Deavere Smith play. In many ways they're quite similar in structure and approach. The effects of creatively patching together real dialogue is profoundly moving in both cases. Meaning is created not through plot per se, but by juxtaposing characters and perspectives.
March 28, 2013
Much like a train, the play is fast-paced but does tend to stop every now and then just to pick up the necessary political facts and then gets back into speed. Not terribly useful for someone looking for a play to read but incredibly insightful for anyone researching the political significance that plays can have.
June 1, 2010
Intelligent. A good example of the verbatim form of theatre, only this version is more tightly woven together and thereby tells a more compelling and linear story.
July 21, 2013
Want to know why the train system in England has fallen so far. Read this play.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews