GAGS BEFORE GRAVITAS
They’re a national treasure:Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey, inventions of Jonathan Lynn and Anthony Jay long before the age of Spads and WhatsApps. The TV shows, 46 years on, still often hit a disquieting parallel with today’s issues. But despite longstanding awed affection for the pair’s creation I found the 2010 stage version a bit cheesy, edged with dated racism. This one is much better: years have passed, and this is a final lap of honour for the pair as old codgers, facing what we all do in declining years and significance.
It’s by the surviving Lynn, who co-directs with Michael Gyngell and gives us an aged Jim Hacker , dishevelled in saggy old trousers, lording it as master of Hacker College Oxford – which was founded after his years as PM with Russian oligarch money. Griff Rhys Jones is grand casting, combining a baffled twinkle with Hacker’s familiar yearning for Churchillian grandeur and legacy. His college wants him out, due to some leaked but pretty harmless remarks about ladies’ lingerie and the effect of Empire. So he invites Sir Humphrey, lately released from St Dymphna’s home for the elderly deranged, to advise him once more.
It goes for gags rather than gravitas: many of the jokes about “wokery” and Brexit are a bit predictable, and the political jokes well-polished over many years (MPs joining the Lords means “leaving the animals to join the vegetables” is a classic, and good). Rhys Jones is reliably funny as ever. But what proper energy the play gets is from the other two: Stephanie Levi John as Sophie his care worker (a former student with an Eng Lit First and a quoting habit), and a wonderful, unexpectedly rounded and comically sharp portrayal of old Sir Humphrey by Clive Francis.
Not only does Francis negotiate the deep sofa and stairlift with hilarious physicality, but in his desperation for a lecturing job and misstep over inheritance tax and a demon daughter in law, he weirdly makes you hope for the happy ending (which we do at last get, in a very British spirit: these figures are too precious to be tortured)
The issues around which the two old men and the fearless care worker clash and banter are pretty predictable – women, race, empire, slavery, safe spaces ,zero tolerance, cancellation and ” free speech”, that last meaning any old brexity bufferdom the men may spout. Levi John is wonderful, drily tolerant, a rising victorious generation but without malice. In one great moment Hacker says she could get a proper job (he despises carerdom) because “You’re young, you’re gay, you’re female and you’re black. Ticks all the boxes”. She replies “I ddn’t realize I was so fortunate”.
Back of the net! But, somehow, kindly. It is indeed a kind show: these are old men, their day gone, Sophie has the future to build and will do. . We can laugh at Sir Humphrey’s entangled obscurantist loghorrea and Hacker’s clinging to the notion that he was a sort of Churchill, but pity them too. And be grateful for all the bygone laughs at govenment: it was good to see. at the curtain call, the cast all salute a photograph of Eddington, Hawthorne and Fowlds.
Apollotheatre.co.uk to 9 May
Rating four
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