ELECTION!

 

a very British farce

​

based on JOHN SWEENEY’s Purple Homicide: Fear and Loathing on Knutsford Heath

​

IN 1997, IN OUR DISTANT POLITICAL PAST, the Cheshire constituency of Tatton was the setting for perhaps the most extraordinary, most farcical dogfight in British electoral history. The battle was waged between incumbent MP Neil Hamilton (with ferocious wife Christine ever by his side) and a man in a white suit named Martin Bell.

​

Sweeney's memoir is ‘a pantomime reworking of Macbeth for the 1990s; a romp with a serious undercurrent; a farce that could only happen in Britain. It is a story with a classical plot, with highs and lows, villains and heroes, and the good guy winning in the end.’

 

ELECTION! is a wonderfully grotesque and entertaining parable of British political and media culture in all its inglorious absurdity. From badly-eaten bacon sarnies to ‘bigoted women’, Big Red Buses bearing big fat lies, Lord Buckethead, Brexit and Bojo, no one does elections quite like the British. And after a decade and more of omnishambles we could all do with a good laugh.

​

In development with Hal Vogel's Slate Entertainment