Best of Enemies

Winner of the 2022 Critics’ Circle Award for Best New Play

Nominated for the 2022 Olivier Award for Best New Play

＂A man should never turn down two things. Sex, and appearing on television.＂

1968 - a year of protest that divided America. As two men fight to become the next President, all eyes are on the battle between two others: the cunningly conservative William F. Buckley Jr., and the iconoclastic liberal Gore Vidal. Beliefs are challenged and slurs slung as these political idols feud nightly in a new television format, debating the moral landscape of a shattered nation. Little do they know they’re about to open up a new frontier in American politics, and transform television news forever...

Best of Enemies is the electric new play by James Graham (Quiz, Labour of Love), directed by Jeremy Herrin, inspired by the documentary by Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon.

This revised and updated edition was published to coincide with the West End transfer to the Noel Coward Theatre in November 2022.

James Graham is a multi award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His play This House gained critical acclaim, enjoyed a sell-out run at the National Theatre’s Olivier in 2013 and its 2017 West End revival was Olivier-nominated. It was chosen by popular vote as the best play of the 2010s by Methuen Drama. James created theatre history when his two plays Ink, about the early days of Rupert Murdoch, and Labour of Love, a romantic political comedy, played in theatres next to each other in the West End in 2017. James won an Olivier award in 2018 for Labour of Love and Ink transferred to Broadway in 2019, receiving six Tony award nominations. James’ play The Vote (Donmar Warehouse) aired in real time on TV in the final 90 minutes of the 2015 polling day and was BAFTA-nominated. His television film, Brexit: An Uncivil War (Channel 4/HBO) is nominated for a 2019 Emmy Award.