I’ve been working with a company called First Draft to produce a rather unusual piece of theatre.

Their idea is to put a writer, a director, and a group of actors together, and six weeks later to expect a fully formed play. I have been one of the two writers charged with writing a play under these conditons – a play which needed to have parts for precisely the actors available (in my case, one man and six women); and a play which could answer the “why now” question – that could not have been written this time last year, or next year.

I’m a middle-aged journalist and author who wants to be a playwright when he grows up.

My eight books include a biography of Laurence Olivier and, most recently, a biography of Tony Blair, now out in paperback as The Survivor (Aurum Press.) My first play, The Sons of Catholic Gentlemen, won the Independent Radio Drama Productions award in 1998 and was broadcast on LBC. My next book will be The Great City Academy Fraud, an expose of a key area of government policy, to be published by Continuum in the new year.

My website is www.francisbeckett.co.uk.

The Play I’ve written for these three performances is called Hide the Front Page. In a world where we need a new and different sensation every day, and when we have had philandering male cabinet ministers and gay male cabinet ministers, we must soon have a philandering female cabinet minister.  The public demands it.  Hide The Front Page is about what will happen when she emerges. 

I’d love you to get to see it. Performances are:

Sun 18th June - Hen and Chickens, 7.00 start, 109 St Paul's Road, N1 2NA

Mon 19th June - The Bedford, 7.30 start, 77 Bedford Hill,  London SW12 9HD
Tues 29th June - The Inn on the Green, 7.30 start, 3-5 Thorpe Close, Portobello Green, London W10 5XL

Francis Beckett