BWW Reviews: DEAD SHEEP, Park Theatre, April 2 2015

To those born in the 90s, Margaret Thatcher must seem like a mythical figure - an, if you will, Wicked Witch of the East (East Dulwich, that is) - who decided who was "one of us" and who was not. And those who were not, were dealt with summarily. No doubt some kids believe that there's exaggeration at work - after all, the same people claim Maradona was better than Messi. But it's all true!

Anyone who doubts Thatcher's chilling power will be convinced by Steve Nallon's terrifying recreation of the UK's only female Prime Minister in Dead Sheep (at the Park Theatre until 9 May). Nallon's "been" Margaret Thatcher for more than half his life on Spitting Image and elsewhere (he delivered the unforgettable, "They'll have the same as me" in the Cabinet in a restaurant sketch) and his complete inhabitation of her person is extraordinary. The walk, the sneer, the rhythm of speech, the tones of voices (Thatcher had a few on which she could call), the impassive cruelty in service of the will to power - it's all there, raised from the grave, back burning as brightly as ever.

And the play isn't even about Margaret Thatcher - at least not directly. It's about Geoffrey Howe, her loyal, then wavering, then ultimately disloyal friend and colleague whose adherence to a politics based on evidence rather than conviction brought about her downfall - a tale every bit as dramatic and unlikely as Thatcher's rise. But was Howe motivated or, at the very least, stiffened by a loyalty to the other woman in his life - his old-fashioned liberal wife, Elspeth? Did her alchemy fashion a wolf from Denis Healey's infamous "dead sheep"?

Jonathan Maitland was at the heart of British political media at the time and has brokered that knowledge (and, no doubt, his contact book) into his first stage play, one brimming with dark comedy, political insight and no little relevance for today.

James Wilby's Howe is still somewhat diffident, but, away from the glare of the cameras (with one fateful exception in the Palace of Westminster), he is principled and decent, a man who knows his mind and wrestles with his conscience. Elspeth (Jill Baker) is patronised by Thatcher and treated with petty vindictiveness - the Howes' much loved grace and favour residence, Cheveney, literally taken from under their feet the moment Thatcher sacked her Foreign Secretary. Howe may be indifferent to Elspeth's more radical political ideas, but a husband's love and respect for a wife overcomes a politician's duty to his mentor and leader.

Around this menage-a-trois a variety of political figures, gone but not forgotten, fill in the context. Graham Seed's ill-fated Ian Gow tries to square the circle between his heroine and his best friend - and is murdered by the IRA before he gets one last chance to sort things. John Wark gives us a splendid turn as a lisping Brian Walden, the Paxman of his time, pressing Howe into a corner, revealing him as a man incapable of pragmatism any longer. Upstaging the lot is Tim Wallers, whose Alan Clark is caricatured as an appallingly unreconstructed Lothario - actually, there's very little caricature in it!

But, for all the intention of Maitland to make this Howe's story, it's not. Though out of the public eye for 13 years and dead these last two, Thatcher still fills every cubic centimetre of every room she enters. Nallon gives her that power and just because he's been doing it for years, it doesn't diminish the power of his acting at all. It was good to get home and see clips of the political leaders debate held while I was in the theatre. No Thatchers among those seven - in every sense. Us Munchkins can sleep easy tonight.

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