When Winston Went to War with the Wireless (NHB Modern Plays)

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It’s a fascinating window into now little-remembered events, and Katy Rudd’s zippy production feels the most at ease while depicting the dawn of the BBC: a ragtag group of eccentrics who genuinely had no idea how to run a broadcaster - because literally nobody anywhere had ever done it before - balancing ethical dilemmas about news coverage with hokey light entertainment shows. On stage her other recent credits include appearing in Anything Goes at the Barbican Theatre in London, and in Copenhagen at the Theatre Royal Bath.

Directed by Katy Rudd, When Winston Went to War with the Wireless is playing at the Donmar from 2 June to 29 July 2023. This one-man writing powerhouse currently has a sell-out play – The Motive and The Cue, about Richard Burton and John Gielgud – on at the National Theatre, as well as a hard-hitting drama of medical ethics, Best Interests, being screened this very week on the BBC.At the back of Laura Hopkins’s metallic design of dangling mics, foley artists and musicians reveal how sound effects are produced: celery sticks are snapped for the breaking of bones. They are under the direction of sound designers Ben and Max Ringham, who are becoming increasingly important in the theatre. The Financial Times and its journalism are subject to a self-regulation regime under the FT Editorial Code of Practice.

Hainsworth is guilty of this: though her fury, as a caged adolescent daughter, makes sense, you long earlier for touches of the quiet intimacy into which she finally settles.There’s also an awful lot of history to crunch through: characters lob gobbets about Gallipoli and the Gold Standard at each other like hand grenades.

On TV, she has appeared in Drop the Dead Donkey (BAFTA nomination), The Crown (Netflix) and Channel 4’s The Windsors, playing Camilla. It brings him into conflict with Stanley Baldwin’s government which seeks to co-opt the service as a state broadcaster. The year is 1926 and the General Strike is on, with every union in the country striking in solidarity with the nation’s 1.Campbell Moore's intimate and revealing performance is very special, like Gatiss's performance in "The Motive and the Cue," but Campbell Moore has more to work with, and the story is more relevant and more important to our lives today. Log in Keep reading with a freetrial Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. Jack Thorne has written a really interesting play that as a viewer gives you plenty to think about (how similar battles between the media and Government are playing out today). He is torn apart, in flashbacks, by his passionate and requited love for a man, Luke Newberry's Charlie Bowser (who he is willing subsequently to share his wife, Muriel, with! Premium Digital includes access to our premier business column, Lex, as well as 15 curated newsletters covering key business themes with original, in-depth reporting.

Read reviews from The Times, Telegraph, i News, the Evening Standard and more, with further reviews to follow. Remarkably, much of it sounds like something you would still hear being broadcast on Radio 4 Extra in the present day. In a subplot, we see how Reith is quietly tormented by the memory of his homosexual lover, Charlie (Luke Newberry). Director Katy Rudd summons the whirr of the early, improvised days of the BBC joyously – a busy merry-go-round of news, improving views and god-awful variety shows. Reith’s lowly factotum Isabel (a poised Kitty Archer) becomes a manifestation of the BBC’s conscience.On the right, there’s a climate of, says Thorne, “absolute paranoia” that a Bolshevik revolution is on its way. Jack Thorne's When Winston Went To War With The Wireless is a gripping play about the birth of a great British institution and its efforts to stay impartial. Once journalists get their hands on them,those curt, day-to-day messages can be just a tad embarrassing — as this week’s expletive-laden evidence to the UK Covid Inquiry confirms. Jack Thorne's play When Winston Went To War With The Wireless is a gripping play about the birth of a great British institution and its efforts to stay impartial.