REVIEW: THE GANG OF THREE by Robert Khan & Tom Salinsky at Kings Head Theatre 8 May - 1 June 2025

‘Drama or history?’ ★★★

I like political theatre. And there are a lot of good things about The Gang of Three at the Kings Head Theatre in Islington – a nice set, lots of laugh-out-loud one-liners, some good acting and fluid writing, three interesting characters. But in the end, it cannot decide whether it is drama or political history, and it doesn’t quite work as either. 

It is about three fiercely clever, ambitious and determined politicians from the centre right of the Labour Party during the Wilson/Callaghan governments (1964-1979): Roy Jenkins, Anthony Crosland and Denis Healey. All three badly wanted to become Prime Minister, and none of them achieved it.

The question it asks is: if they had been prepared to sink personal ambition, might one of them have made it, either in 1976 when the Party elected James Callaghan instead, or in 1980 when it elected Michael Foot? Perhaps this story was in Gordon Brown’s mind when he stood aside for Tony Blair in 1994.

As drama, it has a good enough story to interest political anoraks like me, but if you are not obsessed by the politics, you may not care enough about any of the characters to care what happens to them, even though the play makes a serious effort to get the audience to care about Jenkins – a deeply sensitive man with too fragile an ego for politics, who, as an Oxford undergraduate, had a sexual relationship with Crosland and was very upset by his failure to become union president. 

As history, this play lacks the reason politics matters, which is that it changes policies that change lives. If it were just about the people and their personal ambitions, why write about politics rather than any other field in which personal ambition may play a part? Why not – for example – do what C.P. Snow did, and write about competing ambitions to be Master of an Oxford college? The reason I and others choose to write about politics is that it represents power to change things.

We are given glimpses of policies. We learn that Roy Jenkins became obsessed by the issue of Europe. He did, but why, and why does it matter? We learn that our three protagonists were determined to stop the rise of the left in the Labour Party, personified by Michael Foot and Tony Benn. They were, but why, and were they right?

What about the performances? I suffer from the disadvantage of having known and interviewed two of the three politicians in this play. I have affectionate memories of both Roy Jenkins and Denis Healey. The latter, when I interviewed him for my biography of Attlee (Clem Attlee, Labour’s Great Reformer, since you ask) gave his answer to the charge frequently levelled against Attlee that he pulled out of India too quickly. “Have you ever tried to jump a precipice in two bounds?”

Jenkins is well portrayed by Hywel Morgan, who gets the man’s pomposity and self-regard while also showing his humanity and sensitivity, and does not forget his famous inability to pronounce the letter R. Alan Cox makes an excellent Crosland. But Colin Tierney’s Healey did not seem right to me.

I get that you should not strive to look and sound just like the famous politician you are playing. That’s mimicry, not acting. But it helps to have something in common.  Tierney does not resemble Healey in the slightest, either physically or vocally, and does not seem to want to adopt the mannerisms that were so much a part of the man. It seemed to me that Tierney had done what a good actor does: study carefully the words on the page and create a character who could believably say them. But the character he created was not Healey. 

NOTE: Response from

Dianne Hayter - Baroness Hayter, former Labour deputy leader in the House of Lords

10 May 2025

"It’s a shame your reviewer didn’t enjoy “The Gang of Three” more. It portrays how politicians – for all their principles, values and commitment to the cause – are also human, with the vanity, ambition and jealousies that the rest of us have. For MPs, of course, it really matters, as these are the men (in this case, but now that women have entered the fray I doubt much has changed) on whom our futures depend. Ambition as to who captains a national sport can affect a Championship outcome. Failing to get the best person as PM has greater implications. The play relates how three top notch politicians, partly because they were the same age, failed to ensure one of them emerged as PM. It was the UK’s loss."

Photography: Manuel Harlan

THE GANG OF THREE

King’s Head Theatre, Islington

30 APRIL to 1 JUNE 2025

BOX OFFICE

0207 226 8561

CAST

Alan Cox | Tony Crosland

Hywel Morgan | Roy Jenkins

Colin Tierney | Denis Healey

CREATIVES

Writers | Robert Khan & Tom Salinsky

Director | Kirsty Patrick Ward

Set & Costume Designer | Libby Watson

Lighting Designer | Jamie Platt

Sound Designer | Dominic Brennan

Movement Director | Ira Mandela Siobhan

Casting Director | Harry Gilbert

WHAM Designer | Craig Forrest-Thomas

WHAM Associate | Hannah Locke

Stage Management | Felix Dunning

Production Management | Dan Weager

Press | David Burns

Marketing | Cup of Ambition

Graphic Design | Laura Whitehouse

Video Content | Erica Belton for Pip Films