The Thatcher administration of 1979 to 1990 had a profound and apparently lasting effect on British theatre and drama. It is now roughly a decade since the fall of Margaret Thatcher and, with the benefit of hindsight, it has become possible to disentangle fact from fantasy concerning her effect on the British theatre. During her administration, there was a significant cultural shift which affected drama in Britain. While some critics have argued that the theatre was simply affected by financial cutbacks in arts subsidies, this volume challenges that view. While it looks at the economic...

This unique volume examines the evolution of British historical drama from the birth of modern British drama with John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger" in 1956 to the establishment of the right-wing government of Margaret Thatcher during the early 1980s. The book illustrates how the ruling group within a society establishes a cultural hegemony by which it perpetuates its values as society's norms. "Radical Stages" demonstrates how historical drama within the period increasingly was employed as a weapon in an assault upon this cultural hegemony.

First defining historical drama, Peacock...