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When this one-man (plus a woman) comedy premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe last year, it seemed to have clod-hoppingly missed the zeitgeist. Its subject, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, seemed like yesterday’s man, his 2015 return to Parliament a strangely underwhelming affair, his eight-year-tenure as London mayor largely seen as ineffectual at best.
What a difference a few months makes. BoJo’s star is on the rise again: not because of anything he's done as mayor (does he do anything as mayor?) but because he's established himself as big fish in the small pond of the Brexit campaign.
His mastery of the comeback is a major theme in Tom Crawshaw’s play, which in many ways is exactly what you’d expect: a middle-aged man (David Benson) in a blond fright wig falling over and shouting ‘cripes!’ a lot.
‘World King’ is framed as a vanity-project autobiographical show, a diversion from the day job (‘I work a good few afternoons!’) for London’s outgoing mayor. It’s a source of exasperation for his deadpan aide Helen (Alice McCarthy) who has been cajoled into serving as director and co-star. For more than half of its run time, Boris mithers around affably but toothlessly, portraying BoJo as the same loveable berk that BoJo portrays BoJo as. Benson is a supremely gifted mimic, but it’s difficult to skewer a politician whose entire public persona is essentially a self-parody.
But around halfway through the knives come out: the show’s hitherto jocular narrator (a pre-recorded Simon Callow) suddenly turns into a sort of Ghost of Indiscretions Past, castigating Boris for the affairs, the concealed love child, his treatment of women, a lack of ideals – the moral vacuum behind the bumbling. Which is satisfying in a way, but Crawshaw’s play never really tries to figure out what makes Boris tick, never stops treating him as a cartoon (albeit an evil one). What might have been an exploration of the man feels like a burnishing of the myth.