Tag Archives: Margaret Thatcher

Writer: Moira Buffini Director: Jo Newman Designer: Dawn Allsopp Reviewer: Ron Simpson Handbagged is a polished, civilized and sporadically very amusing entertainment based on an ingenious and appealing premise. It passes two hours stage time most pleasantly, the production is stylish, the performances witty and intelligent, but too often, for a comedy, it’s just not funny enough. Perhaps it’s too ...

Writer: Beth Steel Director: Adam Penford Reviewer: Chris Collett The 1984 to 1985 miner’s strike was one of the UK’s most bitterly fought industrial disputes. Pit communities were torn apart as some miners joined the picket lines, while others continued to work, becoming social pariahs. Beth Steel’s Wonderland tells the story of the strike from both the perspective of the ...

Writer: Neil Gore Director: Louise Townsend Designer: Carl Davies Reviewer: Ron Simpson Townsend Theatre Productions are a rare and wonderful thing, taking self-written, committed and consistently entertaining plays on left-wing subjects, mostly union-related, on the road for mammoth tours. If the tours are mammoth in terms of duration, the production is always small-scale in terms of the impedimenta of theatre ...

Next up in our annual series of Fringe preview Q & A's it's the turn of Margaret Thatcher, Queen of Gameshows. In one sentence tell us about your show. It's a drag comedy cabaret musical satirical game show extravaganza in which I, Margaret Thatcher, make people compete for their jobseeker's allowance - it's like means testing but with songs! What ...

Devisers: In Bed With My Brother Reviewer: Sophie Huggins Stepping into the Komedia space is as though stepping into a funky coloured, party scented, beat pumping time machine, whizzing back to a year synonymous with 80s culture, when strikes were rife, when the Berlin Wall came down and when Maggie Thatcher reigned: 1989. Taking it back is a troublesome trio ...

Writer: Jonathan Maitland Director: Ian Talbot Reviewer: Joan Phillips Anyone even faintly acquainted with the political personalities of the UK during the 1980s will know of the half-man, half-woman Margaret Thatcher; the comic similarities drawn between Heseltine and Tarzan, the references to the Hollywood good looks of Cecil Parkinson, and the arrogance and caddish behaviour of Alan Clarke, but how ...

Writer: Jonathan Maitland Director: Ian Talbot Designer: Morgan Large Reviewer: Ron Simpson The outward and visible signs are that Dead Sheep is a satire: the title based on Denis Healey’s famous gibe, the presence in the cast of Steve Nallon, once Spitting Image’s outrageously accurate Mrs. Thatcher, even the “Very Funny” press comment in the publicity material. But it is ...

Writer: Moira Buffini Director: Indhu Rubasingham Reviewer: Fraser MacDonald Moira Buffini's Handbagged, a satirical take on the weekly audience meetings between Margaret Thatcher and the Queen, plays this week in Edinburgh's King's Theatre, promising a sharp, insightful dramatisation of the relationship between the twomost powerful women of their time. Running chronologically, the play begins with Thatcher's first audience and concludes ...