Dominic Cummings

Dom: the Play

17/08/23

Assembly Rooms (Ballroom), Edinburgh

The first thing to say about Dom: The Play is that it’s not what I’m expecting. Unsurprisingly, at the world’s largest arts festival, the vibe is mostly liberal and self-aware. Like its namesake, Dom: The Play is neither of these things.

This isn’t necessarily a problem – I’m all for challenging my own preconceptions – but the play just doesn’t really work for me. It’s not incisive or satirical; instead, it’s a seventy-five minute defence of Cummings, devoid of any critical analysis of his time in government. It’s easy to understand how people believed the rumours, cunningly circulated by playwright Lloyd Evans, that Cummings actually wrote the script. The closest the play comes to any kind of criticism is the acknowledgement that he didn’t actually manage to achieve what he set out to do.

Although the publicity material promises to reveal the truth about what really happened at Barnard Castle, it doesn’t: he’s never brought to task. In reality, Dom simply dismisses it in one line: “I didn’t break the law.” Surely, even if Cummings the character can’t see his own flaws, the play ought to expose them? Here he’s presented exactly as he seems to see himself: as a visionary hampered only by other people’s mediocrity.

Dom: The Play is an oddity in other ways too. It’s tonally uneven: the bad-wig pantomime buffoonery of Tim Hudson’s Boris sits uneasily alongside the long TED talk-style sections, where Cummings (a very convincing Chris Porter) is given space to expound on his ideas, while the sketches depicting Nicola Sturgeon, Michael Gove, civil servants and Guardian readers are very broad and rarely succeed in skewering their targets.

It’s all a bit icky. There’s something very misogynistic in the way an offstage Carrie Johnson is portrayed, as if she’s Eve or Lady Macbeth, responsible for her husband’s downfall, and there are some revoltingly classist jibes too, e.g. a line about Angela Rayner, which might well be a verbatim quote, but is presented here not as something awful that should never have been said, but as a funny joke, and one we’re invited to laugh at.

I leave disappointed. It feels as though this play is meant to rehabilitate Dom in the eyes of the public, but in truth it feels as smug and tone-deaf as the man himself. I’m angry all over again – about his boorishness and self-importance, and about the damage he wrought.

2.6 stars

Susan Singfield

Brexit: The Uncivil War

31/05/20

Netflix

As an unabashed remainer (and a sore loser), I didn’t bother to seek this out on its theatrical release. But enough political water has passed under the bridge for it to pique my interest when I spot it still lurking on Netflix. Besides, it’s interesting to look back on this story at a time when Dominic Cummings has become arguably the most loathed man in the UK. He’s played here by Benedict Cumberbatch, who doesn’t look anything like the real McCoy, but who delivers a pretty good impersonation nonetheless.

Any fears I might have that the film would portray Cummings as some kind of maverick hero figure are soon dismissed. It’s clear that writer James Graham has no particular love for his subject. Indeed, Cummings is depicted as a self-serving nihilist, a man handed a difficult job, plus complete autonomy, who is determined to win at any cost, no matter how many lies and misdirections he needs to spin. The Cummings depicted here has no political convictions whatsoever, just the all-consuming need to demonstrate that he knows how to bend the voting masses to his will.

The film does a pretty good job of nailing the sequence of events that led to the ‘Leave’ victory and uses a combination of lookalike actors – Richard Goulding is a pretty convincing Boris Johnson and Paul Ryan spot on as Nigel Farage – with occasional glimpses of some of the real players thrown in for good measure. It’s left to Rory Kinnear as Craig Oliver, leader of the ‘Remain’ movement, to portray one of the few sympathetic (if inept) characters in this story. His bewilderment as he sees the possibility of winning the campaign rapidly slipping away from him is palpable and there’s a lovely scene where he and Cummings have a pint together and realise just how much of a game-changer the referendum has been – and how little the two men have in common.

It’s to the film’s credit that it never really takes sides. The Remain campaign is shown to be out of touch, unable or unwilling to change its traditional approach to suit the social-media-dominated times. Leave voters aren’t demonised either – they demonstrate legitimate concerns about the way they’ve been increasingly sidelined over the years.

If nothing else, this is eloquent proof that Cummings, a man who cares not a jot about political values might have no hesitation in flouting a set of rules he helped to create – and why Johnson and his crew might be so desperate to hang onto him, no matter what the cost to their credibility.

While I can’t say I enjoy this film – it feels suspiciously like having my nose rubbed in something rather nasty – it’s a thoroughly decent investigation of recent political history. And those seeking answers will find them here.

4 stars

Philip Caveney