The Gang of Three - Review

Richmond Theatre, London

*****

Written by Robert Kahn and Tom Salinsky

Directed by Kirsty Patrick Ward 

Hywel Morgan, Colin Tierney and Alan Cox

Returning after its 2025 premiere at London’s King’s Head Theatre, The Gang of Three is a fabulous dissection of the Labour Party between 1972 and 1980 and a fascinating glimpse into the skullduggery and disloyalties of parliamentary politics over the same era.

Labour grandees Tony Crosland, Roy Jenkins and Denis Healey are played, respectively, by Alan Cox, Hywel Morgan and Colin Tierney who all give performances that are as sparkling as Robert Kahn and Tom Salinsky’s script. This is an exquisitely crafted drama that layers frequently funny, fictional dialogue over a factual framework of modern history. As the story unfolds each of the three actors increasingly and uncannily evolves into the character that he is playing.

Opening to Jenkins having just resigned as deputy leader from the Labour Party's shadow cabinet, the play explores the trio’s friendships and bitter rivalries that dated back to their times at Oxford. Kahn and Salinsky's script scorches as Crosland and Jenkins caustically remark on their “ersatz camaraderie” while damning the left-wing Tony Benn as akin to a “vicar with a speech impediment”. 

Libby Watson's simple design, a book-cased wall and a red Chesterfield sofa elegantly frames the evening's one-act 90-minute narrative, itself copiously oiled with claret and gin. The trio mark Callaghan’s rise and fall that was to culminate in Margaret Thatcher's sweeping into 10 Downing Street in 1979. Throughout, the Machiavellian machinations of Westminster’s political machine are laid bare, the text at one point describing MP’s (who typically had responsibility for voting in the Labour Party’s leadership ) as the “most duplicitous electorate” - a phrase that has sadly proved timeless in its prescient truth.

There’s an intriguing glimpse of (hitherto largely unreported) intimacy between Crosland and Jenkins during their student years that only adds yet another immaculately researched fragment of history to the play.

If you lived through those years, the evening is unmissable. For everyone else, this is political drama of the highest calibre that deserves a West End showcase.

Runs until 17th October, then on tour

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan