There’s a common phrase that goes something along the lines of ‘if you can remember the 1960’s, you weren’t there’.
Well, in a similar vein, if you weren’t around in the 1980’s you can’t possibly begin to imagine how full of hate that decade was.
Especially so if you were unfortunate enough to be poor, black, left wing, or worst of all gay.
That’s not to say that things weren’t on the cusp of change, they were. But with homophobia enshrined in law under the dreaded Section 28 of The Local Government Act, it seemed like everyone from the ruling party of government downward would rather minorities of any sort just didn’t exist.
Chief demoniser in the commodification of stigmatisation was the media empire run by the man whom Private Eye christened The Dirty Digger – Rupert Murdoch – who, with his salacious content and exploitative soft porn was able through his two main tabloid mouthpieces, The New of the World, and The Sun, to shape the minds of those least able to think for themselves.
The former is thankfully no longer with us – having been brought down by scandal, and its own criminality – but the latter is, though it’s now thankfully a shadow of its former self.
However, at its peak in the 1980’s The Sun had a print run of four million, and claimed a readership nearer to twelve. And sitting at the centre of the web of lies, exploitation, and titillation was Murdoch’s man on earth, its editor, a man still sadly with us, Kelvin MacKenzie.
Naylor’s one-man play, Monstering The Rocketman takes us to the very heart of that world. Told from the point of view of a cub reporter, aiming to follow in the respected footsteps of his late foreign-correspondent-father, it documents in laugh-out-loud and uproarious detail the slow and creeping moral decline from a point of journalistic integrity to the grimy gutter wherein ‘The Truth’ is more than objective, it’s whatever Kelvin Mackenzie says it is.
In the real world countless lives and reputations were ruined, often on the flimsiest of evidence, or no evidence at all. Little people trampled into dust to fill the coffers of News International.
The juggernaut seemed unstoppable and then… and then… The Sun started printing stories about the man they labelled a ‘pudgy piano pounder’, Elton John.
It’s interesting to see what was allegedly happening in the newsroom of The Sun. Having experienced from the outside the Murdoch empire ‘monstering’ him, and as one of the those minorities I listed earlier, I’m conflicted.
What they did was vile and unforgiveable. But ultimately they chose probably the only man in the UK who could afford to fight back, and fight back Elton did, changing not only the newspaper industry with the largest libel trial in UK legal history – a trial that he ultimately won – but in showing that things didn’t have to be the way they were his triumph ultimately led to the better world we have today.
Of course, things have moved on. Murdoch realised that he could wield more power through television than in print, and his Fox News directly led to the creation of Donald Trump as being suitable material for the US presidency.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves… Monstering The Rocketman is a piece of wonderful, funny, thought-provoking, and above all entertaining theatre performed as a tour de force by the incredible Henry Naylor. And what of the protagonist? Will he see the error of his ways? Buy a ticket and find out.
This one-man show is everything theatre should be. Simply brilliant.
The Arcola
Writer: Henry Naylor
Director: Darren Lee Cole
Cast includes: Henry Naylor
Dates: to 21st February 2026
Running time: 75 Minutes, no interval
Date Seen: Thursday 5th February 2026