Thatcher and PM differ on Mozart play

Theresa May has often drawn comparisons with Margaret Thatcher, but in one respect she is unlike her predecessor: her love of theatre.

The Prime Minister has said her last outing was Amadeus, enthusing: “It’s brilliant – if it’s still on, go and see it.”

Lady Thatcher was not a natural theatre-goer, although on one rare foray she went to Amadeus

– and hated it.

Sir Peter Hall recalled that Mrs Thatcher, as she then was, came to dinner after seeing Simon Callow as Mozart in Peter Shaffer’s play, and told him it was “disgraceful” that the National Theatre had portrayed Mozart as a foul-mouthed hell raiser, despite evidence of his fourlettered outcries.