The theatre can be an uncomfortable place. Often the auditorium is hot, the seats hard and they even squeak! But what was uncomfortable about Cardiff’s New Theatre on the opening night of the wonderful “Dead Sheep” by Jonathan Maitland is that we left the theatre cheering a Tory!
It’s 1989 and Geoffrey Howe has just delivered his damning resignation speech to the House, all but ending Thatcher’s reign. How did we get here?
The next two hours takes the audience through every clever step, every undermining play, every treacherous stab that led to the downfall of the UK’s most-divisive, most-controversial Prime Minister.
A cast of just six deliver a political tour de force. All your least-favourites are portrayed – from the ill-fated Ian Gow; to the tremendous Elspeth Howe; to the ‘foul-mouthed, lecherous, sexist, entitled pig’ Alan Clark – all deliciously. And fronting the show, the hero and villain respectively, Geoffrey Howe (The Archers’ Graham Seed) and Margaret Thatcher (Spitting Image’s Steve Nallon). Even “The Weekend World’s Bwian Walden” makes an hilariously over-egged appearance.
The performances are top-notch. Nallon’s Thatcher is better than ever and, surprisingly, played relatively straight, almost without caricature. Seed, as Howe, managed to make one of the world’s most boring and hapless men seem a champion of reason and decency (oh dear God!). The rest of the cast shine too.
Seeing an expert cast flesh out the murkier moments of British political history (and not just for laughs, though there are those by the bucketload) remind the audience that history repeats itself. This story’s events are hauntingly prescient and never more relevant than today.
“Brexit” hangs over the stage like a phantom, without ever being specifically mentioned. With iffy opposition, brutal tragedy, Parliamentary careerism and the bloody Tories havin’ all the women PMs, one could be forgiven for drawing parallels between then and now.
Dead Sheep is a hugely enjoyable play, ram-packed with satirical digs at the party known as Nasty, some gentle and some not so. While those with little awareness of the events in question may get a little lost along the way, there is everything here that a left-leaning politico could wish for in a smashing night out. If you’re True Blue, however, you may be better served staying in and rewatching your Downton box sets: your blood pressure might not hack it.
Simon Watkins and Gareth Bundy reviewers.
Cardiff’s New Theatre now until Saturday 15 October. Call 029 2087 8889 for tickets.