Month: May 2010

Yes, Prime Minister – Chichester Festival Theatre Review

Posted on by chrisjeff

Yes, Prime Minister at Chichester Festival Theatre review Jim Hacker David Haig Sir Humphrey Appleby Henry Goodman“I’m not so sure about a hung parliament – hanging would be too good for them,” quips Sir Humphrey Appleby, and there are plenty more puns where that came from.

Yes, Prime Minister has returned and politicians across the country will sleep much less easily as a result. During the 1980s, the BBC TV series was a roaring success; over five series (including three of the original incarnation Yes, Minister) it won over the most unlikely of fans, including Margaret Thatcher and Tony Benn.

Paul Eddington played the endearingly incompetent Jim Hacker MP, who was given to grand public gestures and Churchillian declamations, whilst Nigel Hawthorne provided the perfect accompaniment as the devious Cabinet Secretary Sir Humphrey who sought to rein in Hacker’s idealistic tendencies.

Three decades on and the show’s co-writers (Sir Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn) have added edginess and controversial views to their already bursting arsenal of political irreverence and acidic public sector satire. After the sad deaths of Eddington and Hawthorne, the creators have moved to cast David Haig (The Thin Blue Line, Four Weddings and a Funeral) and Henry Goodman (The Damned United, Notting Hill) in the main roles. Haig’s turn as Hacker manages to combine statesman-like cunning with bumbling ineptitude, but sadly misses the loveable vulnerability that Eddington brought to the role. Goodman takes Sir Humphrey’s Machiavellian deception to a whole new level, whilst keeping the basic justification that what the PM doesn’t know can’t hurt him.

The plot nonchalantly juggles various hot-potato topics, including Middle Eastern oil imports, illegal immigrants and teenage prostitution. The section most likely to cause offence amongst liberal theatrical types, however, is the flippant treatment of climate change as the ultimate panacea for politicians looking to distract attention from their current failings. Referring to his proposed green reforms, Hacker boasts “even if it doesn’t make any difference, no-one will know for at least 50 years.”

It is in the second half, though, that the heady blend of intellectual farce and quick-fire wordplay starts to drag a little. With escalating volumes of spirits ingested, Hacker becomes increasingly desperate and absurd in his behaviour, and you suddenly become aware that this is new territory for the franchise. At no point are subtle concepts such as sympathy or compassion entertained which, whilst unsurprising, is a little disappointing as the play edges past the two hour mark.

Despite its discreet shortcomings, the return of Yes, Prime Minister is almost perfect in its timeliness. With the political uncertainty of a Hung Parliament a ripe topic for satire, this production will run and run. A West End transfer is surely inevitable. Indeed, it wouldn’t be surprising to see this show outlast the Lib-Con coalition it so superbly lampoons.

Yes, Prime Minister is on at the Chichester Festival Theatre until 5th June www.cft.org.uk

Article first published by Open Magazine

Election 2010: How Cleggmania Turned Into Henmania

Posted on by chrisjeff
Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg and British Tennis Player Tim Henman
Clegg and Henman: Separated at Birth?

So Thursday night’s election results were quite the anti-climax for the Lib Dems, worthy of England’s most disappointing tennis player. Feverish polls which had predicted a 30% vote share proved wildly inaccurate, with the third party even winning fewer seats than in 2005. It seems that the impact of the television debates has been grossly overstated, as The Times’ chief leader writer Daniel Finkelstein predicted at the very start.

There are a few key points to conclude from this. Firstly, that voter allegiances run too deeply to be significantly affected by three televised debates, which, lest we forget, less than 20% of the country actually watched. Secondly, that for the Lib Dems to ever stand a chance of unseating Labour, we will need drastic electoral reform, probably in the form of proportional representation. Thirdly, that faced with the option of voting for an unproven party in the middle of an economic downturn, the electorate bottled it, and understandably so. No time for a novice, indeed.

However there are a few silver linings. Firstly the Lib Dems could achieve significant gains from a hung parliament. As I write this, the Yellows are believed to be considering a power sharing deal from David Cameron which could see Lib Dem MPs in the Cabinet and even limited concessions on electoral reform. Secondly the fringe parties such as the BNP, UKIP and Respect failed spectacularly. Nick Griffin polled third and was verbally tarred and feathered and chased out of town by Margaret Hodge, Nigel Farage’s plane crashed, George Galloway even wimped out of hearing the verdict of my constituency, who roundly rejected him. Thirdly the Green Party took a big step forward by taking Brighton Pavillion to make Caroline Lucas their first ever MP.

At the end of such an extraordinary election it is easy to see this as a victory for those same two parties who we’ve been stuck with for 80-odd years. But the more you inspect the results and consider the implications of a hung parliament, it becomes clear that politics in the UK just became a lot more open and far more interesting.