Playwrights Jane Thornton and John Godber first staged Shakers in 1985, a point when the escapism of working-class new romanticism was morphing into the cynicism of loadsamoney Thatcherism. At the start of the decade, working as a waitress in a cocktail bar seemed glamorous to the Human League; by the end, satirising a brutish love of money seemed necessary for Harry Enfield. Thornton and Godber’s play, set on the night shift of a glitzy, raucous and superficial cocktail bar, straddled those eras of escapism and excess.
Nearly 40 years on, you’ll be lucky to find a bar that’s open, never mind raucous. Down the road from Wakefield’s Theatre Royal, the Elephant and Castle is on the market and, on a Tuesday night, pubs are either sleepy or shut. That is why the considerably rewritten Shakers: Under New Management is a much darker cocktail than before.
