Abstract

At a time when the notion of ideological polarisation has returned to the forefront of mainstream political discourse, this book addresses the resurgence of reactionary thought as it is expressed in the UK’s theatrical culture, offering a timely engagement with current articulations of right-wing politics all the way from liberal conservatism to far-right extremism. It reads contemporary dramatic engagement with right-wing thematics and concerns not exclusively in terms of its subversive or emancipatory potential but instead as frequently invested with a liberal-centrist disposition towards neutrality and disinterestedness that valorises deliberate ambivalence as the guarantor of both of objectivity and complexity. In doing so it offers a new perspective on the relationship between political discourse and its mediation in dramaturgical form, identifying a paradigm whereby the dimensions of right-wing and reactionary politics are shaped, framed, and dispensed within liberal-centrist parameters that themselves constitute regulative regimes of intelligibility.