PATRIOTS to get WEST END transfer The play about the Russian oligarch who backed Vladimir Putin Will Keen as Vladimir Putin and Tom Hollander as Boris Berezovsky (Photo: Mark Brenner)…
Anne-Marie Duff plays the matriarch of the family over half a century. She has born three children with the youngest Laura (Emma Shipp) still at school. Her husband Alistair is a trade union shop steward and tells us that in 1965 half the working population are in a trade union. In 2017 this percentage had fallen by more than half to 23.3%. In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher has demolished trade union power with legislation against secondary picketing and the defeat of the miners’ strike in 1984/5.
The score is alternative rock by Duncan Sheik with the book and lyrics by Steven Sater. There is a beautiful clarity to the sung words. It is pretty raunchy stuff with scenes of sado-masochism and masturbation but it has an honesty lacking in society then, and to a lesser extent, now.