Bloody Difficult Women review: Walker delivers a sensitive coda

The debut play by journalist and critic Tim Walker is an admirable attempt at dramatising the spat between Theresa May (Jessica Turner) and businesswoman Gina Miller (Amara Karan) over the Prime Minister's attempt to invoke Article 50 and trigger the UK's withdrawal from the EU without Parliamentary approval.

3 / 5 stars
Bloody Difficult Women

BATTLE Jessica Turner as Theresa May (Image: Facebook/Bloody Difficult Women)

The facts are filtered through the gauze of fiction as civil servants and journalists become servants to Walker's intentions - to show the media's role in manipulating the nation's response to both women, especially the Daily Mail whose editor Paul Dacre (Andrew Woodall) is the torrentially potty-mouthed puppetmasterin-chief.

Advertisement
Get the latest news and gossip from the Royal Family, plus selected offers and competitions
Invalid email Invalid email

You agree you are 18 or over. We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you've consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and third parties based on our knowledge of you. You can unsubscribe at any time. More Info.

Walker has great fun with invented civil servant Sir Hugh Rosen (Graham Seed) as an apparently happily married family man who habitually employs pretty young boys as his personal assistants.

But he comes a cropper with Dacre's cliched and entirely unconvincing chief gunslinger/reporter (Calum Finlay) who speaks in Cockney rhyming slang to the editor's bewilderment.

Advertisement

Otherwise, there is enough theatrical gristle to chew on in Stephen Unwin's spartan but effective production, and it is salutary to be reminded of aspects of May and Miller's backgrounds that gave them common ground.

Having exposed the patriarchal climate which almost suffocated both women, Walker delivers a sensitive coda, allowing them a brief moment of mutual understanding.

BLOODY DIFFICULT WOMEN at Riverside Studios until April 2 Tickets: 020 8237 1010

Advertisement

PREMIUM ARTICLES

NEWS

POLITICS

ROYAL

SHOWBIZ & TV

SPORT

FINANCE

TRAVEL

LIFE & STYLE

F1

TENNIS