Pope-ally wired! Why Mark E Smith’s maligned Catholic play is getting a reboot

The Fall frontman’s play about a papal plot appalled critics when first staged in 1986, with Leigh Bowery starring as a cardinal. Now Hey! Luciani is back – but does it make any more sense 40 years on?

When Steve Hanley joined Manchester post-punk group the Fall, he expected to be playing bass guitar, not the pope on the London stage.

“I was the new pope,” remembers the musician. “I had a full pope suit on with about seven different layers of cassocks, and I’d come out to wave.” Hanley’s papal arrival signalled the final moments of a kaleidoscopic and surreal production that encompassed mafia gangsters, exiled Nazi commanders, and the performance artist Leigh Bowery playing a cardinal. “It was bizarre,” Hanley concedes.