The Lady’s Not for Walking Like an Egyptian – Royal Exchange, Manchester

The Lady’s Not for Walking Like an Egyptian was performed at the Royal Exchange, Manchester. Further tour dates include Norwich Arts Centre (22 April) and The Albany, London (23–24 April).

Star rating: 3 stars ★ ★ ★

In theatre terms, if a show is sold as one thing but actually delivers something else, the end result can go one of two ways. Audiences are either left feeling wrong-footed and disappointed or pleasantly surprised as things take a welcome turn for the unexpected.

This sort-of musical revue, commissioned by London’s Ovalhouse theatre to celebrate its 50th birthday, purports – as it’s slightly awkward title suggests – to combine the words of Margaret Thatcher’s best-known speeches with lyrics from the best-selling songs from female artists of the 1980s, and just about sneaks into the second category.

In truth, very little of its running time is devoted to such comic musical juxtapositions. When they do occur, like the partnering of Thatcher’s uber-pious St Francis of Assisi-quoting speech when entering office with Sister Sledge’s ‘We Are Family’, they are most effective. But those expecting a 1980s singalong peppered with pithy satirical sideswipes will be sorely disappointed.

That it remains quite so enjoyable is due in no small part to the likability and chemistry of performers Nat Tarrab and Rachel Mars, otherwise known as comedy theatre double act Mars.tarrab. This loose set-up is really just a jumping point for their riffing, sparring, lip-synching and silly dancing, as they take a scattershot look at the decade that wilfully declared that greed is good. The younger Mars is literally a child of the 1980s. Having been born at the start of the decade, she embodies the callow youths who know nothing of a pre-Thatcher Britain, whereas the older Tarrab, who came of voting age at the close of the decade, has more first-hand knowledge of the political swathe that the Grantham greengrocer’s daughter cut through British society.

Some of the broader comedic salvos are purposefully exaggerated to the point of cartoonishness. As political commentary goes, two grown women squashing a cardboard boat under spacehoppers to represent the sinking of the Belgrano is about as sophisticated as campaigning to get ‘Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead’ to the top of the charts in the week of the Iron Lady’s funeral. But in-between the silliness the pair does touch on some interesting points, for example on how Thatcher tempered the more bullish male characteristics of the Westminster bear pit with feminine wiles to get her own way. But rather than building up cogent arguments, they too often rely on broad visual brush strokes alone to get their points across.

Towards the end of an entertaining 70 minutes, however, the disparate strands start to gel and a more coherent message emerges. There is genuine ire at the “state-sanctioned bigotry” of the Section 28 policy banning the promotion of homosexuality in schools, while a section on Thatcher’s foreign policy, including a touching recital of anti-nuclear protest song ‘Carry Greenham Home’ – which, aside from a burst of ‘I Know Him So Well’ from Chess, is the only sung section – and a reading from Raymond Briggs’ atomic fable ‘When the Wind Blows’, has real poignancy.

But the most heartfelt message relates to how the sexual and creative freedoms of the 1980s arts and music scene had been neutered and neutralised by the time Thatcher left office in the 90s, epitomised by the mega-bucks musicals that flooded the West End. But, as Mars and Tarrab admit an unswerving fondness for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, there’s a conflicted and contradictory view of the decade that this show manages to encapsulate in its own endearing and slightly haphazard way.

Chris Bartlett