I’m Sorry Prime Minister review – consistently funny and often hilarious
This stage play gives a fond farewell to two of the most beloved characters in British sitcom history.
This stage play gives a fond farewell to two of the most beloved characters in British sitcom history.
Is this really the last outing for former PM Jim Hacker and retired civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby? That’s certainly what writer/director Jonathan Lynn has stated, and the poster declares that it’s the “final chapter”. If that’s really the case then this stage play bids them farewell in style.
We first met the now-iconic comedy duo in Yes Minister back in 1980, when Paul Eddington’s Hacker was the newly appointed Cabinet Minister to the fictional Department of Administrative Affairs, and Nigel Hawthorne’s Sir Humphrey was the department’s head civil servant determined to thwart him.
Then came Yes, Prime Minister in the mid-1980s, which saw Hacker ascend to the top political position (although which party he represented was never stated), with Appleby becoming Cabinet Secretary, still entrenched in his belief that it’s civil servants not politicians who really run the country.
On stage rather than TV, chapter three sees Lynn on sole writing duties, his co-writer Antony Jay having died in 2016. Hacker is now ensconced in an Oxford lodge as the master of a college named in his honour, and Sir Humphrey is called upon to try and help his old chum/nemesis out of the right mess he lands himself in after some un-woke remarks.
With Eddington and Hawthorne also having sadly passed away, Griff Rhys Jones and Ian Francis are tasked with filling their shoes – and they’re more than up to the job. Jones is wonderfully gruff, his Hacker afflicted by congestive heart failure, arthritis, a bad back and gout. He even has a stairlift, much to the amusement of Sir Humphrey’s terminally ill but still razor-sharp-witted retiree.
Francis pretty much steals the show as Sir Humphrey, thanks to the wisecracks that Lynn feeds him and his ability to rattle off bewilderingly long diatribes, but Jones proves to be a great sparring partner.
Also in the mix is a terrific Stephanie Levi-John as Hacker’s care worker, Sophie, who is young, black and gay, and therefore a sharp contrast to the stuck-in-the-mud ex politician who thinks his £51,000-per-annum pension is an insult, and whose views about a Cecil Rhodes statue rub her up the wrong way.
The result is consistently funny and often hilarious as two political dinosaurs come up against the voice of a new generation, with the play riffing on everything from Brexit to cancel culture – a bit heavy-handedly in the second act, perhaps, but always with the satiric wit and dazzling wordplay that defined the TV show.
And as a goodbye to two of the most beloved characters in British sitcom history, it’s a fond and fitting coda as they head off into the sunset of their years with a twist that I won’t reveal but which feels exactly right.
I’m Sorry, Prime Minister is at the Apollo Theatre, London, until 9 May and tours the UK from 19 May.
(Hero image credit: Johan Persson)
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