Vodka with Stalin
Upstairs at the Gatehouse
 

HARRY POLLITT, general secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain until 1960, knew two devotions in his life: one to the party, the other to fellow member Rose Cohen.

This deeply researched and compelling new play from Francis Beckett, which charts Harry’s progress through the turbulent years from 1929 to the 1950s, premieres Upstairs at the Gatehouse for a short sell-out run with a further run from March 29 to April 2.

Pollitt is a man fuelled by anger. From a childhood stalked by poverty, through the untimely deaths of three beloved sisters and the unbearable working conditions of his mother, he emerges with an unswerving certainty that communism is the one way of overturning the world’s power structures. He spends his life chanting the mantra that he and his friend Joseph Stalin share together. “Hold the line,” they say. “Hold the line and bend for no-one.”

The play beautifully captures this essential fervour of the communist, against which the Labour Party seems pale and spineless.  

But always there is conflict. We see it in Harry as he falls in love with Rose; we see it in Rose as she decamps to Moscow to marry the man she loves; we see it in Stalin for whom “holding the line” means always sacrificing the person for the sake of the cause. 

Rose Cohen is a remarkable woman: committed party member, secretary to Sylvia Pankhurst and the Webbs, editor in Britain of the Daily Worker and of foreign affairs for the Moscow News in the 1930s. Then, shockingly, she is arrested in Moscow as an enemy of the people, and Harry pleads for her life to a Stalin who, already intent on the Great Purge, has long lost compassion for the individual plight.

Driven by the greater cause, Stalin cares nothing for the individual. And though later, long after poor Rose’s execution, she is exonerated of all blame, the tragedy remains.   

It’s a supremely dramatic theme and one which Beckett and his skilful director Owain Rose roll out with pace and panache. 

There are some splendid scenes – not least that between Pollitt and George Lansbury, then leader of the Labour Party. The way that Lansbury’s openness, warmth and humour (captured effortlessly by Silas Hawkins) reaches out to David Malcolm’s conflicted Harry and grips us is the true heart of the play.

Miranda Colmans brings us the steel and life-affirming passion of a Rose so wronged it makes your heart bleed. Jonathan Hansler expertly reveals the acquired menace of  a Stalin too long trapped in his own ego, and Denise O’Leary and Luke McArthur set the Moscow context with unswerving assurance. 

As Pollitt, David Malcolm charms and engages us. Perhaps something of Pollitt’s rage and leadership drive is missing – he seems like a mild and easy person in the play which can’t have been so. 

But this is an accomplished and timely piece. In a time like the present, when Europe is again in turmoil, Russia up and active and the poor getting poorer, Harry Pollitt would hold the line.

Runs until February 19 2023 and then March 29-April 2 2023. Box office: (020) 8340-3488, upstairsatthegatehouse.ticketsolve.com