A Liverpool theatre has caused consternation after staging an adaptation of author Dame Hilary Mantel’s The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, just one week after a gunman was accused of trying to shoot US President Donald Trump.
The short story, published a year after the former Conservative Prime Minister’s death in 2013, imagined a plot to kill Thatcher and drew widespread criticism across the political spectrum.
Now playwright Alexandra Wood has adapted the plot and the production is on stage at the Liverpool Everyman theatre.
The decision has sparked anger and concern among some for its focus on violence against a politician, following the murders of MPs Jo Cox in 2016 and Sir David Amess in 2021.
The play opened its doors on May 2, just a week after a gunman attempted to rush into a dinner attended by US President Donald Trump in Washington to kill members of the administration.
The timing also sparked criticism due to it coinciding with yesterday’s local elections.
Former leader of the Conservative Party Iain Duncan Smith told the Daily Mail: ‘I really question putting on the play before and just after a huge election, and I question whether it’s a huge dogwhistle.
‘It’s one way of resurrecting a bogeyman, or bogeywoman, for the left and it’s troubling to suggest that violence pays.’
He added that the timing was all the more ‘peculiar’ given the recent spate of attacks and attempted attacks against people in the UK, particularly among the Jewish community.
‘You put on a play that is essentially about killing somebody, a politician – it’s really rather peculiar in the midst of people’s anger bubbling over.’
A Liverpool theatre has caused consternation after staging an adaptation of author Dame Hilary Mantel’s The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, just one week after a gunman was accused of trying to shoot US President Donald Trump
Playwright Alexandra Wood has adapted the plot and the production is on stage at the Liverpool Everyman theatre
Jade Marsden, a former Conservative candidate for mayor of the Liverpool City Region also told the BBC the decision to stage the play is wrong.
‘I recognise that we shouldn’t be afraid to have debate and controversial plays in the arts,’ she said.
‘However, I think given the political tensions in the world and the increase in violence towards politicians, albeit that Margaret Thatcher has already passed, I don’t think it should be encouraged.’
But Ms Wood rejected claims the play glorifies violence, saying: ‘The play in no way advocates assassinating our political leaders, or anyone.’
Award-winning author Dame Hilary was unapologetic for the work during her lifetime before her death aged 70 in 2022.
She described her ‘boiling detestation’ for the politician, revealing she came up with the idea for the novel when she happened to see Thatcher through a window and realised how easy it might be to assassinate her.
‘Immediately your eye measures the distance. I thought, if I wasn’t me, if I was someone else, she’d be dead,’ she said.
When the book was first published in 2014, Nadine Dorries, then the Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire, told the Daily Mail: ‘I cannot quite believe it. I am gutted because Hilary Mantel is one of my favourite authors.
‘It is shocking as it is so close (to Margaret Thatcher’s death) and she still has living family and children. It is about a character whose demise is so recent.’
Defending the work at the time, Dame Hilary said: ‘I think it would be unconscionable to say this is too dark, we can’t examine it. We can’t be running away from history – we have to face it head-on.
The short story caused controversy and is set just a year before the IRA attempted to kill Thatcher by bombing The Grand Hotel in Brighton
Mrs Thatcher’s suite escaped largely unscathed, besides the bathroom, which was severely damaged. Had she been in there getting ready for bed, she could have been killed
‘Because the repercussions of Mrs Thatcher’s reign have fed the nation. It is still resonating. And say what you like about her, whatever your view of her, she was a shaper of history.’
Set in 1983, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher tells the fictional story of a sniper from Liverpool who plots to kill the PM by lying in wait at a window in Windsor, after being let into a flat by a woman who mistakes him for a plumber.
The year it is set has extra significance at it is just one year before the IRA Brighton bomb plot, which sought to murder Thatcher at the Conservative Party conference.
A device planted by IRA member Patrick Magee weeks earlier exploded during the early hours of October 12, injuring 30 people – although Thatcher herself remained unharmed.
After the publication of the story former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Tebbit – whose wife was paralysed in the bombing – described it as a ‘sick book from a sick mind’.
The play, which the Guardian gave a four-star review, is on at the Everyman until May 23 and has a 14+ age restriction.
According to the theatre’s content warning, it includes ‘references to murder, death and/or dying’, ‘violence, kidnapping, physical and emotional abuse’ and ‘the use of herbal cigarettes’.
