It’ll All Be Fine!
It’ll all be fine! plays in the Downing Street Cabinet Room in the dying hours of 29th March 2019 before the UK crashes out of the European Union at midnight.
The British Government’s emergency cabinet committee nervously awaits the arrival of the EU’s last-minute ambassador sent to rescue the Brexit negotiations by any means possible.
Still hopelessly divided, the bickering ministers are so convulsed with panic that they fail to realize on his tumultuous arrival that – as in Gogol’s Government Inspector – they have got the wrong man. Maybe negotiations would be easier with a con man?
The clue is in the subtitle A Whitehall Farce.
The most successful seasons of British farce were played at the Whitehall Theatre just off Trafalgar Square. Only farce in the grand Feydeau-esque tradition could do justice to the current goings-on just down the road in Whitehall, our seat of government.
Act Two picks up where Gogol’s play leaves off, with the arrival of the real Government Inspector. Not something permissible in Czarist Russia. Perhaps today?
Read the playscript here: IT’LL ALL BE FINE! A Whitehall Farce by Gareth Jones
© Gareth Jones 2018
