Mantel’s Thatcher Play Opens at Liverpool Everyman
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- The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher – August 6th 1983 opened at Liverpool Everyman, adapting Hilary Mantel’s 2014 short story for the stage.
- Hilary Mantel provided the original short story that imagines a mistaken‑identity case in a Windsor home, which the play expands into a political satire.
- Alexandra Wood wrote the adaptation, preserving Mantel’s humor while dramatizing the 1980s political context of IRA hunger strikers, the Belgrano sinking, and high unemployment.
- John Young directed the production, featuring a set described as “Ceci Calf’s interior” with floral bedspread, stained wallpaper, and a working kettle, which is later dismantled for a surreal shift.
- Robbie O’Neill and Anita Reynolds portray mismatched actors who, amid full‑size blue‑dressed Thatcher dolls raining down, inhabit a metaphorical netherworld of possible futures.
- Simisola Majekodunmi designed stormy lighting that heightened the play’s surreal mood.
- Kieran Lucas provided techno‑intense sound design, amplifying the production’s bold, provocative tone.
Why it matters: The production gives audiences a fresh, theatrical lens on 1980s British politics, while showcasing the collaborative work of Mantel, Wood, and Young; theatregoers gain a provocative, humor‑infused experience, and the play’s bold staging challenges conventional historical drama conventions, inviting reflection on power dynamics.
