Max Stafford-Clark directs new political satire at the Arts Theatre

Director Max Stafford-Clark will join forces with a team of the UK's leading playwrights to present an evening of political satire, A View from Islington North, which opens at the Arts Theatre in May.

The production will consist of a number of short plays including The Accidental Leader by Alistair Beaton and How to Get Ahead in Politics (Not the Nine O’Clock News) by Stella Feehily (This May Hurt A Bit), which take a look at what goes on behind the closed doors of our major political parties.

David Hare (The Moderate Soprano, The Judas Kiss) takes us inside George Osborne's mind in Ayn Rand Takes a Stand, and Mark Ravenhill (Shopping and F**king, Candide) considers the cost of war in The Mother.

Finally Caryl Churchill's (Escaped Alone, Top Girls) Tickets Are Now On Sale focusses on the ever increasing world of advertisement where 'even language is sponsored'.

On the evening of political satire, Stafford-Clark said: "From Beyond The Fringe to Spitting Image to The Thick of It, political satire has never really gone out of fashion, and continues to act as a pungent corrective to political pomposity and ambition.

"Over a few years Out of Joint has accumulated a number of short plays, originally written for other purposes… It occurred to me then that we had the beginnings of a pertinent and provocative evening! Alistair Beaton and David Hare happily responded to an invitation to write new plays, Billy Bragg agreed to compose a new song, and there we had A View from Islington North."

A View from Islington North runs at the Arts Theatre, London from 18 May – 2 July 2016.