Maxine Peake is set to portray the morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse in a new play, The Last Stand of Mrs Mary Whitehouse, at the Nottingham Playhouse. The production, written by Caroline Bird, explores the life of the Christian activist who famously pursued the BBC over sex and swearing on television from the 1960s onwards.
Bird, a gay feminist playwright, admitted she was not naturally drawn to the subject, given Whitehouse's opposition to homosexuality. However, after researching Whitehouse's books, she found the campaigner more complex than the comic figure often portrayed. 'Reading her books, I thought: this woman is not at all the joke that some have presented her as,' Bird said.
The play includes a content warning for graphic sexual language, homophobia, and references to suicide and death, though Bird noted it contains no actual sex scenes. The production aims to present Whitehouse's perspective without purely rebuking it, a challenge Bird found necessary for dramatic effectiveness.
Bird described the difficulty of writing convincing homophobic arguments for the play, which caused tension at home with her wife. She rejected the notion that Whitehouse was simply a product of her time, calling her 'a woman with a huge platform and agenda for 25 years.'
