
REVIEW: The House of Shades, Almeida Theatre (2022)
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.