WHAT'S ON ......June 2013
ThatcherWrite
at Theatre 503 responds to another former PM's legacy with plays by Dan
Reballato, Kay Adshead and Judy Upton and more....THE GUARDIAN
Reviews for Kay Adshead's I am sad you are dead Mrs T ....
...
a poetic mortar-bomb in the form of a double-edged, three-part eulogy.
The language is penetrating witty and economical. And the climax - the
tragic story of a vulnerable elderly woman whose degrading death
contrasts with Thatcher's dignified demise in five-star luxury - is
emotionally explosive.......THE TIMES...
Thatcherism gets another interrogation at Theatre503, with ThatcherWrite:
seven shorts in response to her death. The best are either even-handed
or outrageously satirical. Kay Adshead presents three poems by
17-yearolds, Blair’s babies, to examine her legacy......NEW STATESMAN
...But it is Kay Adshead’s I Am Sad You Are Dead Mrs T
which most cleverly encapsulates aspects of the Tory leader. In three
parts, we see her appeal to bigoted extremists and today’s smooth
right-wing operators before contrasting Thatcher’s comfortable,
cared-for demise in her bed at the Ritz with that of a warm-hearted
cleaning lady who bit by bit slips through the net and is left to rot by
the `society’ whose existence Thatcher refused or was unable to
acknowledge......REVIEWSGATE
... expertly performed and devishily humorous.......ONE STOP ARTS
...Adshead
really brings out the fists. ... The final deeply moving piece lands a
devastating blow to the guts leaving us in no doubt about just who has
suffered and continues to suffer under Thatcher's grim
legacy.......EXEUNT MAGAZINE
...Viewing
Thatcher from the perspective of someone who didn't live through her
reign is a stroke of genius, and though it was utterly hilarious, it
resonated on a serious level too.......SO SO GAY MAGAZINE
...A
trio of eulogies ... from the wickedly acid pen of Kay Adshead. Three
post-Thatcher inheritors of her policies misunderstand, adapt and revile
those policies. ... The witty and very funny stereotypification of the
first two set the poignant humanitarianism of the last into sharp
relief.
