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Monstering the Rocketman by Henry Naylor

 
Rebecca Vines Review by Rebecca Vines 4 Published: 1 Aug 2025 Pleasance Dome Show Dates: 30 Jul 2025-24 Aug 2025

Monstering the Rocketman is a thoughtful, acerbic and tender look at the way in which the British press has played fast and loose with the reputations of the celebrities it has built up – with the sole intention of knocking down again. In this particular case, we are dealing with Elton John – but the list of those forced to pay a disproportionate price for their fame is not only already monstrously long, but – in the immediate and anonymised world of online trolling – ever mushrooming.

Naylor is a triple Fringe First winner, and it is not hard to see why.

This piece takes us back to the deep social divisions of the late 1980s: a time in which yuppies and unemployed miners, aerobics and crispy pancakes, Sloanes and punks coexisted. The glitz of Dallas gripped the nation alongside the cobbled realism of Coronation Street. One minute, Frankie was telling you to relax; the next, Section 28 told you what not to do. And nowhere was this hypocrisy more exemplified than within the pages of tabloid newspaper The Sun – at one time suspected to be read by a quarter of the population every day. A newspaper – and the word is used as loosely as proprietor Rupert Murdoch’s moral compass – happy to splash very topless, very young girls across Page 3... while editorials demonised those afflicted by “the gay plague”.

The repercussions of its sloppy, sensationalist style still reverberate today. Caroline Flack and Meghan Markle are just two of the names that spring to mind as being unfairly targeted simply to boost circulation. Love them or hate them, any reasonable person would agree that the seemingly co-ordinated tide of bile and bloviation was undue, unnecessary and unbalanced. Anyone remember The Sun’s attack on MP Clare Short for daring to suggest that the titillations of Page 3 were unseemly in a family newspaper? In just one of its many crusades against those who challenged its iron grip on the national narrative, Short was labelled a “killjoy”, “fat” and “jealous”.

The witch trials and the public pillory never went away.

Henry Naylor uses the true case of Elton John’s battle with The Sun during this strange decade as a prism through which to ponder the terrible power we have allowed to permeate our news sources. Anyone with even half an eye on the headlines in recent years will remember the half-arsed apology issued for the paper’s appalling coverage of the Hillsborough disaster, and the closure of its sister paper after a raft of phone-hacking and improper news-gathering accusations.

So it is little surprise that, at the height of his supremacy, Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie ran a series of fallacious stories about Elton John’s sex life – and subsequently refused to back down despite evidence disproving the allegations, a public spat with rival paper The Mirror, and a televised rebuttal hosted by Michael Parkinson. It took Elton’s deep pockets to force the million-pound lawsuit that finally silenced their spurious claims – pockets that few similarly wronged names have been able to dig into, thus helping to perpetuate the myth of inviolability (see also: bullish arrogance) that cloaks tabloid vengeance.

Henry Naylor is a triple Fringe First winner, and it is not hard to see why. This is precisely the sort of important piece that proves why the Fringe needs to exist – to showcase the stories that need to be told, rather than the ones we feel we need to hear. The fracturing of the national media has resulted in fewer high-footfall channels holding power to account. Gone are the days of Spitting Image, Friday Night Live, Rory Bremner… now we are more preoccupied with funny cat videos, furniture makeovers and eyebrow tutorials. There needs to be space for this kind of political theatre for as long as there is a hungry audience – desperate to share the laughs and eye rolls in the dark with others similarly outraged and impotent.

Naylor’s is a strong performance, scaffolded by what is clearly a personal campaign to tackle the injustices meted out by the fourth estate. His sincere, immediate and friendly style is designed to encourage those less familiar with the subject, and engage those who remember the heady days of Rear of the Year and Concorde. Naylor flicks between a legion of characters with respect and idiosyncrasy, breathing life into a story that holds as much currency today as it did when it unfolded 40 years ago.

Amir Nisi

Rebecca Vines

Rebecca is an acclaimed practitioner and lecturer with a renowned global practice; and is the current Drama Chairman for the board of the British and International Federation of Festivals. Rebecca began her writing career as a diarist at The Guardian newspaper, and has been reviewing theatre since 2000. Rebecca trained as a performer with the Actors Company, and has written, directed and produced critically acclaimed and sell-out shows at the Edinburgh Fringe since 2003.

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'EXCLUSIVE: ELTON IN VICE BOY SHAME'. When Elton John, 39, is falsely accused of bonking prostitutes, he launches Britain's largest libel lawsuit. But The Sun editor finds sorry the hardest word, and tries bullying the Rocketman into submission with a blistering campaign of Media harassment. Elton faces punch-ups, gangsters, bugged phone calls, a 10-million pound divorce suit and a pair of Devil Dogs. Will he remain still standing? Or will The Sun go down on him? Based on a true story, it's a timely drama about press values by triple Fringe First winner Naylor.
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