In the Print Tickets

In the Print (King’s Head) is written by Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky, who had a snowball hit with Gang of Three, which genuinely makes 1970s Labour Party machinations around the party leadership very entertaining. Here they focus on the 1980s battle between media magnate Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Sunday Times, and the print unions led by Brenda Dean, the formidable leader of the union representing the print unions, who opposed Murdoch’s vision to revolutionise newspaper production. Even better, it’s directed by Josh Roche, whose production of The Forsyte Saga was recently seen both in London and at the RSC in Stratford. If you reckon that ballet is mostly pretty but not very galvanising, think again and head to the Royal Opera House for Mayerling. Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet may hail from 1978, but it is a brutal examination of power, sex and suicide inspired by the deaths of Crown Prince Rudolf of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his mistress, Mary Vetsera. A massive scandal at the time and one whose dark eroticism is explored, most notably in one of ballet’s most famed pas de deux.