Review: Trojan Horse - Leeds Playhouse

It represents precisely the kind of incisive, challenging work the Playhouse champions.

The verbatim company’s award-winning docu-drama, compiled by writers Helen Monks and Matt Woodhead from 200 hours of interviews and material in the public domain, tells the ignoble story of the 2014 ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal when a number of Birmingham schools were accused of teaching extremist Muslim ideology to their students.

Leeds Playhouse opens a new studio space where emerging playwrights can thriveIt charts with unflinching honesty the media storm that followed, fuelled by unsubstantiated claims, and a series of brutally inflexible OFSTED inspections seemingly commissioned with the sole purpose of finding ‘evidence’ of a so-called ‘Islamic Threat’.

Michael Gove, Minister of Education at the time, doesn’t come out of all this very well, and nor should he – his actions and those of certain sections of the Press helped create an atmosphere of fear, hatred and division.

Review: A View from the Bridge - York Theatre RoyalPerformed by five actors playing multiple characters (teachers, pupils, local councillors, inspectors) with great skill and conviction on a minimal set comprising school desks moved into position to represent a range of spaces and locations, the production is slick, energetic, timely and troublingly resonant.

FOUR STARS