Comedy has a licence to offend. In fact, when it doesn’t, we tend to feel cheated and mutter darkly about its tameness. Instead, we long for comedy to be cutting edge, and willingly give it permission to trouble taboos and stray into sensitive territory. Two plays – one at a West End venue and the other a fringe show – offer a chance to assess the state of the nation’s funny bone. In Yes, Prime Minister, a theatre version of the classic 1980s BBC series written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, the comedy is as familiar as an old cardigan. Updated to include references to the coalition Government, the story starts with Prime Minister Jim Hacker – an unexpectedly topical name in the week that the News of the World phoning hacking scandal went toxic – hosting a summit to discuss a financial bailout of Europe by the oil-rich fictional country Kumranistan.
But a crisis is soon precipitated when the foreign minister of this Asian republic demands an under-age girl for his evening’s entertainment. Can Hacker and his Cabinet Secretary, the legendary Sir Humphrey Appleby, suppress their moral qualms in the face of this national emergency? And what about the splits in the Cabinet, the falling value of the pound and the future of the entire European project?
Humorous, farcical and up-to-date (the appearance of special policy advisor Claire shows how power at the top of British politics has shifted over the past 20 years), this is a show that is both laugh-out-loud funny and comfortably satirical – it is certainly a pussycat when compared to the BBC’s The Thick of It. The jokes about power and ineffectual politicians are good, but very undemanding. It’s a very English night at the theatre.
I liked the scenes in which Hacker’s private secretary, Bernard, replies to BBC questions by using a folder full of formulaic answers, each one more empty than the previous one, and Sir Humphrey’s long and convoluted set speeches are models of passionate obfuscation and deviousness. Directed by Jonathan Lynn and starring Richard McCabe as Hacker and Simon Williams as Sir Humphrey, this comedy is inoffensive and struggles to keep up with the appalling farce of reality.
By contrast and drawing on a more absurdist tradition, Nick Gill’s deliciously extravagant Mirror Teeth is a vivid and wild satire. Set in Our Country, it rips the veil of politeness from the everyday conversations of the Jones family. Of course, it helps the play’s radical politics that the family – parents James and Jane, and children John and Jenny – gets its money from arms dealing, but its comic bite is a bit closer to the bone.
At first, when 18-year-old Jenny brings home Kwesi, her black boyfriend, the play seems like a straight satire on racism of the 1950s variety, but soon it deepens into a humorous account of contemporary sexual, spiritual and moral beliefs. Jenny is constantly referred to as an “18-year-old sexually active schoolgirl”, while Kwesi is so religious that he won’t have sex with her.
Even more taboo-tickling is the sexual banter between Jenny and her brother John, and between Jane and Kwesi. Suggestions of incest, explicit sexual scenes and a plot that takes the family to the Middle East to sell arms to insurgents all make for genuinely provocative viewing.
Although this initially hilarious piece of new writing does falter a bit half way through its 90 minutes, its atmosphere of spirited absurdity feels fresh and occasionally even a bit dangerous. Well directed by Kate Wasserberg, this is a fringe farce that shows how, when money never sleeps, morality tends to doze off.
