TWO YEARS AFTER THE NEXT ELECTION..
Here, a mere meringue’s throw from Eton itself, is an imaginary Prime Minister of that ilk. Tidier in person and with a touch more integrity than the last one, but personally almost as insouciant, as resistant to reading red-box bumf , and as prodigal with tags from Aristotle and Virgil. It’s an unBoris.
This is a touring play from Michael McManus, a veteran if bruised political insider, centrist-sensible himself but fascinated by the mechanisms and personalities. I rather liked his “An Honourable Man” (https://theatrecat.com/tag/an-honourable-man/) which like this one was brooding on the possibility of a centre party, and like his quote from Mencken “for every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, clear and wrong”. Not to mention the deathless comparison of referendum-year Britain as “a cat which doesn’t know whether it wants to be in or out, so just sits around licking its balls”. He also had a small hit with Maggie And Ted just after the lockdowns.
But a tsunami of mad politics has rolled over us now, and it’s a brave thing to turn Uk politics into improbable farce, given that it does it so well without assistance . And an awkward thing too, when real wars and savage partisanship split us nastily for real. All this McManus acknowledged in a brief q and a the night I went. But hey, sometimes you gotta laugh just so you dont cry. And maybe audiences normally uninterested in Westminster have thoughts prompted by jokey drama: it doesn’t have to be James Graham or indeed the immortal House of Cards that make people think.
And in that enterprise you need an affable comic presence like Matthew Cottle ((deathlessly funny as Primce Edward in The Windsors). He is John, leader (to his own surprise) of the new One Nation party, which after the 2026 implosion of both Labour and Conservative parties, has landed a hung parliament full of brand new , massively inexperienced MPs barely under the control of a camp tarantula-wielding chief whip, with a tough Northern Labour matriarch as deputy PM and an angry SNP redusing to be bought off without another referendum.
The meat of the situation, though, and the main driver of its drama, is the presence of Ryan Early as the Spad, Seth , the Cummings/ Campbell adviser. He is horrifying: manic, never still, knows he is right, angry when challenged , unelected but dictatorial, he twists and jerks and poses and shouts and points: the very inverse of the smiling, insouciant, punning, jokily unworried PM. The PPS and deputy PM and others detest Seth, and his instinct to break things, court trouble, stir up anarchic events and mess about with the very constitution appals them. What the PM jokingly calls his “Fannymesto” – good gag – is ultra Brexit neocon brutality disguised as centrism. He bas brought in an AI asistant which crunches data and operates only within his framework: it’s called MediaAnnie and is quite funny quite often. Meanwhile all the old jokes get an airing – about fake sincerity etc – and there are some nice passages as staff try to keep the PM on message and he breaks away and charms the electorate again. Two crises occur, a poisonous volcano cloud which might cause lockdown, and an incident with the King’s car hitting a protester.
There were more laughs at the old too-familiar jokes than I expected, from a pretty full Windsor audience . And I would like McManus to write more political plays. But ironically, I don’t want them to be comedies. I think he has things to say – this became very obvious in a tremendous rant near the end when Seth the Spad has been disposed of. But daft farce dilutes it. Even delivered by the divine Cottle..
RATING 3
TOURING:
Theatre Royal Windsor to 18 May
New Theatre, Cardiff21-25 May
Cambridge Arts Centre 4-8 June
Worthing Connaught Theatre12-15 June
Theatre Royal Bath 18-22 June
Malvern Festival Theatre 25-29 June.
theatreCat 