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The Review - FEATURE
Published: 31 January 2008

Tom Green

New turn for the ‘late’ Iron Lady

WHEN they finally put you in the ground I’ll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down,” Elvis Costello once sang of Margaret Thatcher.
Mr Costello and a legion of like-minded others might reach joyously for their steel-toed boots presented with Tom Green’s latest play, The Death of Margaret Thatcher, but their joy would be premature.
The Iron Lady is not really dead; nor, the playwright insists, is his play of her imagined death “a piece of agitprop” for or against the former PM.
“I don’t want to express a political stance,” says Green. “People have to make up their own minds. The play looks at what her impact has been and why she continues to be such a compelling and controversial figure.”
“Everyone’s got an opinion about Mrs Thatcher. You do meet people who’ll say they’ll party on the day she dies. On the other hand there are people that absolutely worship her. She does still polarise opinion so strongly.”
Opening at the Courtyard Theatre in Old Street next week, the play is something Mr Green says he has always felt compelled to write, as “one of Thatcher’s children”.
“I was born in 1970; my first political memory is her resignation. For a lot of us she’s loomed very large. I’ve always wanted to write something about her, about the effect she’s had on all of us, but I could never really find a way in. Sometimes I think you need to have a bit of distance before you can concentrate on someone as iconic as Mrs Thatcher.
“She has fallen off the radar in recent years but I think her personality and politics continue to resonate stronger than we’d thought. Her reputation has even been revived in some eyes – Gordon Brown has had her round for tea.”
Not everyone is happy with Green’s subject matter. Lord Tebbit, Trade and Industry Secretary in Thatcher’s government, observed that Mr Green had “a problem of comprehension”.
“Margaret Thatcher is not dead. He would have been better to write a play called The Life of Margaret Thatcher which called for her to be reinstated at Number 10,” he said.
But Green is adamant he is making a comment on how “we relate to public figures in general” rather than casting stones at Thatcher.
“It’s the story of how different people are affected by the news in ways that are often surprising,” he says.
“There’s been a lot of straightforward political drama. This play is not entirely what people might expect.”
SIMON WROE

• The Death of Margaret Thatcher runs at the Courtyard Theatre, Old Street, from February 5-March 2

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