Haydn Gwynne is especially charming as Baldwin and Adrian Scarborough is, as always, engaging as Winston Churchill, then chancellor of the exchequer, who takes charge of Baldwin’s battle. Actors use them to create noises, often playfully, at a mic and this is as central to the drama as the story itself. Churchill, railing against Bolshevism but also self-interestedly keen to outflank PM Stanley Baldwin (Haydn Gwynne, in a lovely gender-blurred turn) launches his own paper, The British Gazette, promoting a biased government line.

The play is written by Jack Thorne and directed by Katy Rudd, with design by Laura Hopkins, sound design by Ben and Max Ringham, lighting design by Howard Hudson, movement direction by Scott Graham, music by Gary Yershon, video design and animation by Andrzej Goulding and casting by Anna Cooper CDG. 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. Born in Bristol, England, he has written for radio, theatre and film, most notably on the TV shows Skins, Cast-offs, This Is England '86, This Is England '88, This Is England '90, The Fades, The Last Panthers and the feature film The Scouting Book for Boys.

Book tickets to When Winston Went To War With The Wirelessat the Donmar Warehouse, Londonwith WestendTheatre. Musicians and foley artists cluster the back of the stage: we see behind the curtain of radio magic, but it only increases the wonder. He was recently formally diagnosed as autistic, after a doctor wrote to his agent suggesting as much, having heard him on Desert Island Discs. Adrian Scarborough avoids a quivering joweled caricature of Churchill, and though instantly recognisable with the help of a cigar, presents a man with ambition who is ridiculed in the corridors of power. Coming to the Donmar Warehouse this June, Katy Rudd directs this new play in which Stephen Campbell Moore plays former BBC director John Reith with Adrian Scarborough playing a young Winston Churchill.

You have to hand it to the Scottish government: the deletion of WhatsApp messages is good preemptive news management, whether accidental, by default or deliberate. The heat in the Donmar circle didn't help and whilst I don't think I actually nodded off at any point (which could have been dangerous given that I was perched up there, as you have to lean forward to see), my attention was definitely wandering and though the staging was good, the dialogue in particular and treatment in general didn't work for me.Winston Churchill, then chancellor, sets up the British Gazette as the voice of the Conservative government. There are laughs too, mostly provided by the variety acts that populated the Beeb in between news segments: Haydn Gwynne's singer's assertion that you shouldn't be "cruel to a vegetab(uel)" made me laugh, though the biggest laugh belonged to the versatile Luke Newberry, whose skit, about the lies he would tell his Mum to prevent her discovering he was an actor, was laugh-out-loud hilarious! Any changes made can be done at any time and will become effective at the end of the trial period, allowing you to retain full access for 4 weeks, even if you downgrade or cancel.

It premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in June 2023, directed by Katy Rudd, with Stephen Campbell Moore as Reith, Adrian Scarborough as Churchill, and Haydn Gwynne as Stanley Baldwin. Certainly, he kissed and admired Bowser, then married his wife Muriel three weeks after Bowser proposed to her, a dodgy move in anyone’s books. The simple set is made up of a variety of objects which are used to create live foley which accompanies the action on stage. Newspapers cannot be printed at this time, which presents a sudden gap – and therefore an unexpected opportunity – in national communications.Scarborough plays the cigar-chewing, epithet-spouting politician as a fleshy, boozy narcissist, focused only on his own advancement. Most of the good things of this world are badly distributed and most people have to go without them,” he wrote. At the time of the general strike, the Royal Charter was yet to be granted, and so the future of the BBC was in an even more precarious position. You'll find our theatre news, theatre reviews and theatre interviews are written from an audience point of view. Lizzi Gee’s driving choreography punches home in the same direction as Rob Howell’s design, with its gaudy palette and skewed perspectives: as if echoing the size of his self-esteem, our hero’s tousled room is studded with miniature illuminated houses, clinging to its walls like limpets.

The plot: four years after its founding the high-minded Reith has built the British Broadcasting Company (it became a corporation in 1927) into a national service to entertain, educate but also inform.She recently starred in When Winston Went To War With The Wireless at the Donmar Warehouse in London; and The Great British Bake Off Musical at the Noel Coward Theatre in London. It stages an early crisis for the BBC that shaped its future and set the tone for the way it handles political pressure to this day. But even if the endlessly watchable Campbell Moore is undoubtedly the main character, it’s not really a play about Reith, but rather the historical events he was caught up in –the raking over of his love life feels like it probably belongs in a different drama.