Margaret Thatcher truly is the Queen of Soho. She is fabulous.
Maggie is always at hand, ready to comically thwart any attempts at scene-stealing. It’s her show after all.
Immaculately dressed with perfectly arranged hair and a knowing attitude, Matt Tedford’s Maggie oozes stage presence from the get-go, managing to maintain a high-energy performance throughout. Her winking asides throughout the show are hilarious and well placed. The entire show is beautifully tongue-in-cheek.
This performance examines what could have happened if the late Margaret Thatcher accidentally took a wrong turn, wandered into Soho, was mistaken for a drag queen and wound up a total sensation on the eve of the vote on Section 28. Should this have happened, the show postulates, then Maggie could never have lent her support the Act, which prohibited the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality.
The venue, the Bosco tent in Assembly Gardens, couldn’t be more perfect for the performance. Designed like a circus tent, it provides the ideal space for this outlandish performance. Maggie interacts beautifully and cuttingly with her audience throughout. Topical humour is artfully employed, and the 80s sounds and references that run through the show are very well chosen.
Maggie’s heroic story of betrayal, triumph, shock, and many other emotions, is narrated and acted out by Maggie herself. But she is not alone in taking her audience through her journey of self-discovery. She is aided in her adventures by the Wets, Ed Yelland and Nico Lennon. They are appropriately dressed in jean short-shorts, white vest tops and dashing moustaches. Each of them play a range of different roles, donning a variety of props and accessories to differentiate between each character. They both give fantastic performances, but Maggie is always at hand, ready to comically thwart any of their attempts at scene-stealing. It’s her show after all.
