Bizarre and outdated: Word-Play at the Royal Court reviewed            

The Royal Court’s new topical satire, Word-Play, opens with a gaffe-prone Tory prime minister giving a TV interview in which he commends Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. The Downing Street press team suffer a meltdown as they struggle to draft an apology or a retraction. Opposition parties try to profit from the blunder and the PM’s words spread across the globe and earn him praise from various authoritarian governments, led by China.

This opening scene makes sense only if the British prime minister is a white male named Boris but the author, Rabiah Hussain, hasn’t troubled to update her script in the light of recent developments. The result is a topical play that feels like ancient history. Hussain seems unaware that Powell’s speech, made in 1968, led to his dismissal from the shadow cabinet by Ted Heath. And apparently no one has told her that Heath was the prime minister who later welcomed Asian refugees after their deportation from Uganda by Idi Amin.