Review: MESSIAH

“What breaks a great leader?”

5 hours ago

Image credits: Jean-Marié Malan

We are in Westminster 2025, inside the campaign of maverick frontrunner for leader of the opposition, Stu Bailey. We join with Sophie, principled and driven, in her new role as parliamentary aid, and are caught up in currents of breaking scandal as Sophie, and indeed we, are forced to confront that paradox between ambition and integrity and whether or not they are incompatible in the merciless political climate of the City.

MESSIAH is a new play by Aisling Towl, Current Shaffer Playwright in Residence at Trinity College for 2024/25, exploring sex and power in a time of political contention. If you are caught up on Severance and want something of that ambience, director James Critchley does an excellent job on a production that is acutely contemporary in a manner that feels buoyant and cutting-edge rather than trying too hard (think cyber-bullying montage). Rapid fire overlapping commentary, old Etonian stereotypes, and moveable podiums render MESSIAH’s political world larger than life.

Image credits: Jean-Marié Malan

We are carried along by the thrill of the campaign: our candidate is an Oxford graduate via state education – ‘enough to make a socialist out of anyone’- which encourages us to inspect what it means to be progressive or radical when yourself having benefited from the currents of privilege at elitist institutions. This is the exposed underbelly of politics; we watch the live reaction of Stu Bailey’s team to his candidacy speech, unpicking its powers and revealing the contrived layers that go into building a winning politician. MESSIAH’s texture of expenditure scandals and calibre of schooling is all too familiar.

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MESSIAH is sharply funny: watching a competitor for leader of the opposition go to pieces over the Andrew Tate question had the audience cringing. Aisling Towl conjures outrageous yet scarily accurate types all the more pre given those channels existing from Oxbridge to high powered roles in Westminster and the media. Long before grating American podcaster asks what being a man means to Stu Bailey, we are thinking it. The implications of male populist leaders in socialist movements raises the question as to whether they ever don’t disappoint the bare standards of fidelity or respect for women.

Image credits: Jean-Marié Malan

“Ambition is sexy, that’s all you need.”

MESSIAH boasts an excellent ensemble. Aisling Towl takes stock characters – the young, bright-eyed career woman, the wry, jaded senior female colleague, the charismatic political upstart- and injects new life into tired tropes. Idara James’s Sophie is the heart of the production, balancing earnest moral commitment with pragmatism. Jacob Benhayoun is Stu Bailey, the face on the crimson posters about town, and indeed the nexus of the story. His charming physicality is winning as a maverick oppositional leader and he is entirely convincing in his role. Grace Heslin is sharp and terse as Helen whilst Wilf Jenkinson is hilarious as Barnaby and in his ensemble roles: ‘I’m a massive cliché, aren’t I?’

Image credits: Jean-Marié Malan

Credit must go to set and lighting design respectively (Clotilde Dumont, Anna Gungaloo). Evocative screening and transitions create a heady atmosphere of intrigue, transporting us to the corridors of power. Moveable podiums make the jostle of competing voices cartoonish. MESSIAH conjures the sterile space of the conference hall and hotel suite, showing the apparatus of late stage capitalism with all the exposed scaffolding. MESSIAH leaves you thinking about what you have seen means for you.