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Greg Wilkinson's Work Outlives the Lettuce

Richard Beck Richard Beck
23 Feb 2026

Greg Wilkinson is Oxia Theatre’s Writer in Residence and the author of The Last Days of Liz Truss? If her premiership was a short-lived yet dark cloud, he has certainly found the silver lining to it in this play that goes from strength to strength. We invited him to tell us more about it.

The play and its protagonist have one thing in common: they’re both still here

In June 2024, when I was promoting Oxia Theatre’s first performance – back then just a rehearsed reading – of The Last Days of Liz Truss?, a friend of mine said, “I thought we’d all agreed to forget about her.”

In the intervening 20 months, the play and our former PM have been on different journeys: the former enjoying two sold-out runs at Kennington’s White Bear Theatre and an award from London Pub Theatres (Best Actor for Emma Wilkinson Wright’s performance as Liz) before its upcoming West End transfer to The Other Palace; the latter losing her seat in the 2024 General Election and continuing to receive opprobrium from multiple sources, then reinventing herself as an online commentator – and, just this week, enjoying a photo opportunity at Mar-a-Lago with President Trump. But the play and its protagonist have one thing in common: they’re both still here.

We’re delighted to have another opportunity to share The Last Days of Liz Truss? with audiences. The play is a tragi-comic exploration of the tensions in politics: between ambition and ability, vision and reality, going short and playing it long. It has some of the things you might expect in a play about Liz Truss – cheese and karaoke, to name two. But it also seeks to move beyond the simplistic summaries of her brief period as Prime Minister: that her record was solely a matter of incompetence or (a less widely held opinion) that she was the victim of shadowy, unaccountable forces in the ‘deep state’ – Liz as the lettuce or the martyr, so to speak.

The rush towards these types of judgement may reflect a broader discomfort with events that felt – by the standards of UK politics and government – destabilising and distressing. It’s easy to forget that, in the 49 days that Liz was in office, the UK experienced the death of the Queen; the sacking of both the Treasury’s Permanent Secretary and the Chancellor; a pensions crisis; and a set of vicissitudes in the market for government bonds that shook our country’s reputation as a bastion of financial stability. Theatre can provide a helpful space to process this sort of collective discomfort, allowing reflection and catharsis around events from our very recent past that offered a glimpse of what life might be like in a country characterised by political freefall and economic anxiety.

If Liz were writing this piece, she would argue that we’re still in a state of economic anxiety, and that the challenges she faced – around the elusiveness of economic growth, the difficulty of departing from orthodox approaches, and the challenge that politicians face in getting the government machine to achieve change at pace – are as relevant to politics today as they were on the day of her resignation in 2022. The play’s focus – on Liz’s rise to the premiiership, her brief tenure, and her imagining of her future after 2022 – allows us to explore this rich set of themes.

But The Last Days of Liz Truss? is not a piece of dry political analysis. The focus is on Liz’s personal journey: both the ‘first act’ – the story of her conviction, determination, downfall and humiliation – and the ‘second act’ – what comes after the fall. There are second acts in political lives: with the greatest of respect to Scott Fitzgerald, we need only look to the USA to see a very high-profile example. What happens if those second acts are characterised not by reflection but by radicalisation? If politicians reinvent themselves through a sense of resentment at the forces they believe have thwarted them first time round? When the response to initial rejection is to embrace the seductive warmth of certainty and defiance? And, when facing seemingly intractable problems around prosperity and security, what directions might those political second acts take?

In 2026 – a year after the play’s last run – these questions remain all too timely. Liz Truss famously badged herself as a fighter, not a quitter. She doesn’t feel like she’s going away any time soon. And the issues raised by her journey don’t feel like they’re going away either. The Last Days of Liz Truss? remains a play for our times.

Richard Beck

Richard Beck

A graduate in theology and education, Richard acted and contributed to dance, drama and music productions throughout his teaching career. He joined Broadway Baby in 2014 and is now our Editor-in-Chief. He usually disappears to warmer climes for the winter to pursue his passion for travel.

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