This House (play)

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This House is a play by James Graham. It received its première in the Cottesloe Theatre at the Royal National Theatre from 18 September to 1 December 2012 in a production directed by Jeremy Herrin. In February 2013 it transferred to the larger Olivier Theatre where it continued to play with much critical acclaim to packed houses until May 2013.

The show was revived at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester from 23 September to 29 October 2016 before it received its West End debut at the Garrick Theatre where it ran from 19 November 2016 to 25 February 2017.^[1]

A UK tour began on 23 February 2018 at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

In May 2019 the play was voted Play of the Decade in Bloomsbury Publishing's '60 Years of Modern Plays' public vote.^[2]

It derives its title from the name given to the House of Commons by MPs. The action takes place in the period in British parliamentary history between the February 1974 general election and the 1979 vote of no confidence in the government of James Callaghan. The play is set in the Palace of Westminster mainly in the offices of the Labour and Conservative Chief Whips. Party leaders such as Ted Heath, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Jeremy Thorpe and Margaret Thatcher remain offstage characters (though Liberal leader David Steel is depicted). The narrative concentrates on the relationships between the two sets of whips (the so-called usual channels), and between the whips, their backbenchers and the members of the minor parties.

Although the play is based on real events, it is neither a documentary nor a biography, but a fictionalised account of a turbulent period in British politics. Conversations are imagined, characters have been changed, incidents added and the time line adjusted.^[3]