Dysfunctional families are getting a lot of stage space in Wellington theatres this year. This time it is that British icon of the war years Sir Winston Churchill and his family that are on show in Circa’s new production of the world premier of Paul Baker’s Meet The Churchills.

And although it is somewhat strange that a NZ playwright’s first major play should focus on something as British as the Churchill’s there is no denying that as a family they make fine fodder for a play. Their lives were continually filled with drama and Baker has certainly done his homework to mine the tomes of writings about the Churchill’s to come up with a fascinating piece of theatre. 

Like many of its ilk, the drama is centred on a family tearing themselves apart during some form of family celebration.

The year is 1962, three years before he died, when although wheelchair bound and physically moribund his mind was nevertheless still as active and as shape as ever, as was his tongue. 

1962 was also a time when Britain was emerging from the shackles of the war years with the youth of the day finding free love, the Beatles and Carnaby Street. But in this household time has stood still as the four Churchill’s go back over their lives trying to form some sort of family unit in the last years of Sir Winston’s life after decades of self absorption and unhappiness. 

While the actual incident in the play, meeting for Sir Winston’s birthday, may never have occurred, the facts of their lives that are regurgitated and disgorged across the floor are based on fact and are, as the playwright says in the programme notes, all well documented. 

The fascination therefore is the way Baker has dramatised them to show the humane side of the Churchills, giving an insight, albeit brief, to what lay behind this iconic family. Baker also cleverly introduces the fictional figure of Dr Stephen Jenkins (Byron Coll), a historian, there to assist Randolph to write Sir Winston’s biography. Although an academic and their equal they refer to him as Jenkins and treat him like a servant. Yet he is young, modern and an outsider who often changes the dynamics of the warring factions.

To portray not only well known figures from history but also the emotional angst of their lives director Ross Jolly has assembled a sterling cast that it is hard to imagine could be bettered for such a play. 

Ray Henwood gives the performance of a lifetime as Sir Winston, both physically and vocally creating every bit the image we remember of the great man. Slouched in his chair with dropping jowls, the cadences of his acerbic one-liners beautifully pronounced in the way we remember Sir Winston speaking. Yet there was also humanity to the character in the final moments of reconciliation showing he was as much a victim of circumstance as the rest of them. 

Helen Moulder likewise turns in a superb performance as Lady Clementine, creating the perfect persona of the matriarch trying to hold the family together yet never really understanding the real needs of any of them. 

Jeff Kingsford-Brown is all gruff and bluff as the spoilt brat of a son and Carmel McGlone conveys convincingly the wayward Sarah trying desperately to claw back the many bridges she has broken over the years with her parents.

And as the interloper Dr Jenkins, Byron Coll mischievously weaves his way through the verbal tirades with adorable charm.

But the play isn’t all doom and gloom as it is peppered with many humorous and often very funny lines to make the production both entertaining and an absorbing insight into one of Britain’s famous families.
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The legendary Winston Churchill looms large in our mythology. As First Lord of the Admiralty he presided over the 1915 ‘Dardanelles Disaster’ (a.k.a. The Gallipoli Campaign) which is reputed to have been our making as a nation. As Prime Minister holding the Defence portfolio, he led Britain and the Allies through World War II, including the ill-fated attempt to disrupt Japanese landings in Malaya and Thailand (late 1941) which led to the fall of Singapore and saw many Anzacs made prisoners of war in hell holes like Changi.

Few families of the era in New Zealand and Australia have not been affected by Churchill’s actions in one war or the other.

In his new play Meet the Churchills, Paul Baker – the English-born, Auckland-educated principal of Waitaki Boys College in Oamaru – cleverly stitches such concerns into a small family gathering in 1962, on the occasion of Sir Winston’s 88^th birthday.

His son Randolph (twice-married, now having an affair with married neighbour Natalie Bevan) has invited Sir Winston and Clementine (properly addressed by subordinates as Lady Churchill) to luncheon at his Suffolk home. Failed actress daughter Sarah (thrice married, twice widowed; a.k.a. Lady Audley, who, like her namesake, has a secret) makes a surprise visit from her new home in Rome.

An outsider, and something of a catalyst to the rather toxic familial mix, is Dr Stephen Jenkins, the playwright’s invention. He has written an unpublished thesis on Churchill’s wartime strategies and is responding to would-be historian Randolph’s advertisement for a researcher. Jenkins’ key source regarding the Middle East has been the diary of Winston Churchill’s chief of staff General Allenby and it emerges he has a personal interest regarding the fate of Japanese POWs.  

Jenkins becomes involved in the luncheon party by accident. His train was late; he had no idea the great man he keeps telling people he has “done” will be there. But he is not one to miss an opportunity; he has questions for Sir Winston – like why did he stop the War Cabinet engaging in peace talks with Hitler?

The wheel chair-bound great man is not, however, about to confess state secrets and deep inner feelings to a pipsqueak nobody. Besides there are family matters to resolve. The parents have only agreed to this luncheon because it is to be “a mending day” (which does not mean Clementine anticipates darning socks and turning shirt collars).

But Randolph wants to know why his father, being privy to classified information, failed to reveal what his wife ‘Pammy’ was up to all those years ago. Sarah, when she arrives, not long widowed, wants to reveal all about her new exotic lover.

Clementine wants decorum to prevail, not least to protect her husband from having another stroke. And apart from taking his nap (except he would rather not dream up a roll call of those who died because of his mistakes), Winston just wants to return to the state he was in before he was born.

Even though Winston has refused a peerage, because it is hereditary, he and his family are deeply imbued in the class system, Randolf especially. He is furious that he will not now become a Lord without earning it (“Earn?” he splutters? “What sort of modern talk is that?”).

Clementine carries her sense of superiority with practised grace. Sarah would slum it for anyone spunky. And Winston still uses his characteristic wit as his principal weapon against the rapidly-changing world represented by the committed egalitarian Dr Jenkins.

It is a volatile chemistry that generates as much comedy as drama in this dynamically modulated world premiere, directed by Ross Jolly.

In John Hodgkins’ otherwise naturalistic drawing room, with a splendid lawn and garden vista beyond the French doors, the reality is heightened by a ‘wallpaper’ of Churchillian images that gives a historical backdrop. A surprisingly new-looking cream sofa with huge patterned cushions, is reputed to have supported the eminent rumps of Kipling, Einstein, Shaw and Chaplin.

Gillie Coxill’s costumes capture era and character well – and wittily, in the case of Sarah’s garish blend of leopard print and bright colour splashes.  

In a tight-fitting early ’60s suit and narrow tie, hinting at early Beatles style, Byron Coll invests his long-haired Dr Stephen Jenkins with a light Liverpudlian accent modified by years at “Univarsity”. He walks the class war tightrope with flair, defying gravity in ways that will frighten traditionalists and provoke mental ‘V’ signs from social revolutionaries.

Baker bookends his play with minimal situation-setting narration from Jenkins then plunges him into the maelstrom that is the Churchill family.

Jeff Kingsford-Brown’s Randolph is such an arrogant and offensive upper-class twit, it’s a major achievement that we feel compassion for him towards the end. His compelling ‘born to rule’ ghastliness is an effective vehicle for much of the exposition.  

Immaculately white coiffed and blue frocked, Helen Moulder brings a regal presence to Clementine, adding bites and slashes of matriarchal savagery when called for. It’s easy to empathise with her, even as we judge her outmoded values.

Initially it seems we are to content ourselves with a shadow of Winston’s former self, in Ray Henwood’s infirm octogenarian. Soon, however, the dry wit surfaces from the grouchy shell and the brain we thought was in decline proves sharp and sound. He’s vulnerable, too.  

As the permanently pickled Sarah, Carmel McGlone oscillates between needy and sarcastic, bitter bitch and drama queen. She too wins our sympathy at crucial moments.

All five actors find full dimension in Baker’s thoroughly researched and superbly crafted characters. They surprise us, delight us, court our despair and draw us into their respective truths. At personal, national and international levels human fallibility is acknowledged, forgiven and in a strange way celebrated.

Meet the Churchills is a domestic epic that deserves full houses in Wellington and a world-wide audience. Schedule your meeting now.
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