Where were you the day Margaret Thatcher died? Pre-empting the actual event somewhat, playwright Tom Green has come up with the sort of headline-generating title few dramas have a hope of living up to, and so it duly proves. Theatre's biggest hitters, David Hare say, or Frost/Nixon's Peter Morgan, might have taken on the Iron Lady's ultimate demise and won on points but the best Green can manage is a little slight comedy and a lot of pointless whimsy.
Where to begin with a hard-headed re-evaluation of Thatcher's legacy? "Nowhere" is Green's answer as, in these 60 minutes, politics barely gets a look-in. Instead, in keeping with our tiresomely self-centred times, various people tell us how they feel about Mrs T.
Green would have done better to stick to a single narrative strand, rather than interweave three. By far his strongest section is the one set in a television newsroom, where a sombre newsreader first imparts the titular information, before reporters are sent out to gauge reactions around the country. Nightly bulletins could have been a nifty way of navigating a week of high emotion - and it's tempting to wonder what Morgan, who made such a fine job of seven days of similar intensity in The Queen, would have done - but instead precious time is wasted listening in on a man's unilluminating therapy sessions and a monologue from a funeral director.
Director June Abbott keeps her production attractively fluid and has fun with the excitable news correspondents out "in the field" for a two-way with the studio. Leanne Elms and Craig Murray, as Dana and Bobby, capture perfectly the infuriating, familiar sequence of the pause, wise nod and sentence started with the news anchor's name. Alex Topham Tyerman's newsreader, Jonelle, is impressively sombre on camera, with an accent that makes Celia Johnson sound common. More could, and should, have been made of off-screen frolics with her boorish producer.
Journalists from all sorts of international media organisations have been enticed to Hoxton for this - but they probably wish they'd saved their England expenses for the real thing.
Until 2 March (0870 1630717), www.thecourtyard.org.uk
The Death Of Margaret Thatcher
The Courtyard
Bowling Green Walk, 40 Pitfield Street, N1 6EU
