Theatre

The New Statesman
Until Jan 27 2007
This event has finished
Trafalgar Studios, 14 Whitehall, SW1A 2DY
Rating:
By Brian Logan

Posted: Mon Dec 18 2006
I bow to hardly anyone in my admiration for the great Rik Mayall, and he’s the only reason to consider seeing ‘The New Statesman’ in its new, staged incarnation. In his ’80s pomp, Mayall’s ludicrously nasty MP Alan B’stard starred in a TV satire on extreme Thatcherism. Accordingly, he now finds himself high up the New Labour hierarchy: ‘I don’t know why you joined the Labour Party,’ says his socialist PPS Frank. ‘I didn’t,’ says B’Stard. ‘The Labour Party joined me.’

There are plenty more hoary gags about the selling of Labour’s soul, plus shameless personal abuse of Cabinet members and groansome schoolboy double entendres. For its first 40 minutes, Lawrence Marks and Maurice Gran’s script is a sitcom without a situation. Then, an Islamic terrorist called Habibi infiltrates Alan’s Downing Street office and the PM is kidnapped, leaving B’stard to take over as ‘Lord Protector – like Oliver Cromwell, only with more draconian powers’. But these aren’t so much plot developments as just things that happen in a two-hour mishmash of scattershot political satire and juvenile sex comedy – with Condoleezza Rice as the love interest.

It falls to Mayall to turn this pig’s ear of a play into – well, a satin if not a silk purse. Abusing Blair by phone, he invests the phrase ‘ fuck off’ with about sixteen syllables. And then there’s the physical comedy: surprise or exultation expressed in pyrotechnic displays of facial dexterity. And he adlibs throughout: inserting topical quips, joking about technical slip-ups, winking at the audience. If only quality control were to join the list of Mayall’s eye-grabbing talents. A call to producers: find this attention-hungry maestro a decent stage vehicle now!