Violence isn't the answer, but nobody's listening anyway
In Liverpool in May 2026, a stage adaptation of Hilary Mantel's once-scandalous short story about a fictional plot to kill Margaret Thatcher has opened at the Everyman theatre, reviving a debate that has only grown more urgent with time. The play arrives not as a celebration of political violence but as an examination of its roots — asking how societies produce people who believe that killing is the only way to be heard. Where Mantel's 2014 story provoked outrage, the 2026 production finds itself speaking to a world where the violence she imagined has, in too many places, become real.
- A play staging the fictional assassination of a former prime minister has opened in the city that resented her most, reigniting a long-running argument about where art's license ends and its responsibility begins.
- With real assassination attempts against politicians rising on both sides of the Atlantic, critics argue that even fictional dramatizations of political murder carry a dangerous charge in the current climate.
- The production refuses easy catharsis — the would-be assassin's logic is interrogated, not celebrated, as a woman who unknowingly shelters him pushes back against the idea that violence can ever be an answer.
- Director and playwright insist the work is not incitement but diagnosis: a staged inquiry into the desperation and disconnection that turn political grievance into the impulse to kill.
- The production runs until May 23, leaving audiences with a question that outlasts the curtain call — not whether Thatcher deserved her enemies, but whether any society can survive the collapse of its capacity for genuine disagreement.
Hilary Mantel's short story about a fictional sniper waiting to shoot Margaret Thatcher was always designed to unsettle. Written after Mantel glimpsed the former prime minister from her Windsor flat window, it imagined a man from Liverpool — a city that blamed Thatcher for its industrial ruin — preparing to take a shot at the woman he held responsible. When it was published in 2014, it drew fierce condemnation from Thatcher's allies. Mantel, who had spoken openly of her contempt for Thatcher while also acknowledging her as extraordinary dramatic material, died in 2022 without seeing what her story would become. Thatcher herself had died the year before the story appeared.
Now, in May 2026, playwright Alexandra Wood has adapted the story for Liverpool's Everyman theatre, and the argument has returned — sharpened by a world that has changed around it. The play is set in 1983 and turns on a conversation between Brendan, the fictional marksman, and Caroline, the woman whose flat he has entered under false pretenses. She is no Thatcher admirer, but as the two talk — about Irish republicanism, Liverpool's abandonment, powerlessness and rage — she resists his logic. Wood says the audience gets perhaps thirty seconds of wish-fulfillment before the drama begins to complicate everything.
The production has drawn criticism from Jade Marsden, a former Conservative mayoral candidate in the Liverpool City Region, who argues that staging such a work now — when real politicians have been murdered and assassination attempts have multiplied — is irresponsible regardless of artistic intent. Wood and director John Young reject this, arguing the play does precisely the opposite of incitement: it stages a conversation about why political violence happens and why it must not.
What troubles Young most is the broader climate the play reflects — a world where genuine disagreement has been replaced by rapid judgment, where people place targets on one another without ever attempting conversation. The play uses Thatcher and her imagined assassin as a way into that larger crisis, asking how societies arrive at a place where killing a politician feels like a rational response to powerlessness. It is, finally, less a play about Thatcher than about the cost of failing to hear one another.
Hilary Mantel's short story about assassinating Margaret Thatcher arrived in 2014 as a deliberate provocation—a title designed to unsettle, to divide, to make people uncomfortable. The award-winning author had spotted the former prime minister from her own flat window in Windsor, emerging from a hospital after eye surgery, and the image lodged itself in her mind as the seed of a darker fiction. She wrote about a sniper from Liverpool, waiting in an unfamiliar apartment, preparing to take a shot at the woman he blamed for his city's industrial collapse. When the story was published, it enraged Thatcher's supporters. Lord Tebbit, whose wife had been paralyzed by the IRA's Brighton hotel bombing in 1984, called it "a sick book from a sick mind." Bernard Ingham, Thatcher's former press secretary, dismissed it as "vindictive." Mantel herself had spoken of her "boiling detestation" for Thatcher, yet also acknowledged the former PM as "a fantastic character" and "the very stuff of drama." Thatcher died in 2013; Mantel died in 2022. Neither would see what their story became.
Now, in May 2026, the Liverpool Everyman theatre has staged an adaptation by playwright Alexandra Wood, and the old argument has surfaced again—sharper this time, because the world has changed. The play opens in 1983, a year before that real bombing, and it centers on a conversation between two people: Brendan, the fictional marksman, and Caroline, the woman who lives in the Windsor flat and has unknowingly let him in, thinking he is a plumber. She is no admirer of Thatcher either. But as they talk—about Irish republicanism, about Liverpool's abandonment, about powerlessness and rage—she tells him that violence is not the answer. The play does not offer simple catharsis to Thatcher's enemies. Wood says the audience gets "maybe 30 seconds" of wish-fulfillment before the drama complicates everything else.
What the play actually examines, Wood argues, is how people respond when they feel unheard, when the political system seems to have abandoned them. Brendan's act is framed as terrorism born of desperation—a violent attempt to matter, to have impact, to be seen. Caroline represents a different response: passive, uncertain, but ultimately resistant to the logic of murder. The play asks what happens when these two positions collide, when conviction meets doubt across a window overlooking Windsor.
In Liverpool, where Thatcher remains a figure of deep resentment for her role in the city's 1980s decline, the production carries particular weight. Yet the theatre's artistic choices have drawn criticism. Jade Marsden, a former Conservative candidate for mayor of the Liverpool City Region, argues that staging the play now is irresponsible. She acknowledges the value of controversial art and debate, but points to the rising tide of real violence against politicians—assassination attempts in the United States, murders of elected officials in Britain—and suggests that even a fictional dramatization of such violence sends the wrong message at the wrong moment.
Wood and director John Young reject this framing. They insist the play does not advocate assassination or incite violence. Instead, they argue, it does the opposite: it stages a conversation about why violence happens, and why it should not. Young notes that since Mantel wrote her story, the threat has become undeniably real. Politicians have been murdered. Assassination attempts have multiplied. The anger and disconnection that Mantel imagined in her sniper are no longer merely literary—they are lived conditions in the world outside the theatre.
What troubles Young most is not the play itself, but the broader political climate it reflects. He describes a world where there is no longer space for genuine disagreement, where people tear each other down quickly, make fast assumptions, and put targets on one another without promoting conversation. The play uses Thatcher and her would-be assassin as an entry point to that larger crisis. It asks: How did we get to a place where killing a politician seems like a reasonable response to feeling powerless? And what would it take to rebuild a society where people could think differently from one another without reaching for violence?
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher runs at Liverpool Everyman until May 23. It is, in the end, less about Thatcher than about us—about how we argue, how we listen, how we fail to hear one another, and what that failure costs.
Citas Notables
The play in no way advocates assassinating our political leaders, or anyone— Playwright Alexandra Wood
We live in a world now where there isn't the space for people to actually have conversations and debate— Director John Young
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why stage this now, when real assassination attempts are happening?
Because they're happening. The play isn't celebrating violence—it's asking why someone would think violence is the only language left that anyone will listen to.
But doesn't putting it on stage give that impulse a kind of dignity it shouldn't have?
The play doesn't dignify it. Caroline, the woman in the flat, refuses it. She tells Brendan that killing Thatcher won't solve anything. The real work is in that conversation—watching two people with completely different responses to the same broken system.
Mantel herself said she hated Thatcher. Isn't the play just giving voice to that hatred?
Mantel was mischievous, yes. But the story she wrote is more complicated than her own feelings. It's about what happens when hatred becomes action, when desperation becomes terrorism. That's not the same as endorsing it.
What does Liverpool bring to this that another city wouldn't?
Thatcher destroyed Liverpool's economy in the 1980s. People there still feel that wound. So when a character says he's acting for Liverpool, it lands differently. The play isn't abstract—it's rooted in a place where the anger is real and recent.
Is the play arguing that we've failed to create space for real political disagreement?
Yes. Young says we've become very good at tearing each other down quickly, at making fast assumptions. The play suggests that when people feel completely unheard and disconnected, violence starts to seem rational. It's a warning about what happens when we stop listening to each other.