YES - PRIME MINISTER
YES, PRIME MINISTER, Sydney Theatre, 4 April-13 May 2012. Photos: John Lloyd Fillingham, Mark Owen-Taylor and Philip Quast.
The careers of senior Whitehall public servant Humphrey Appleby and his puppet-boss, the hopeless and hapless MP-to-PM Jim Hacker, commonly known as Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, are among the most successful TV sitcom series ever. There is an irony in there somewhere because as any public servant will tell you, they're not comedy - they're documentaries.
This, the first ever stage show, was written by original creators Anthony Jay and Jonathyn Lynn and it perfectly captures and replicates what makes the "sit" part of the "com" so enduringly popular: the idea that we the public have been given entree to the machinations and tribulations of government. At the same time, the "com" part of the "sit" relies on gifted actors understanding and being able to deliver the peculiarly English style of farcical realism that makes these series unique.
As the machiavellian mandarin Sir Humphrey Appleby, Philip Quast hits just the right note of minor public school camp beneath the urbanity. This is a man whose idea of informality is to remove the perfectly laundered white handkerchief from his breast pocket. It is famously his role in life to safeguard the wellbeing of the public service while ensuring that his minister, then prime minister, doesn't do anything silly - and if he does, that he doesn't get egg on anyone else's face but his own. In Yes, Prime Minister - the stage show - Quast is also given and must deliver Sir Humphrey's fabled soliloquial obfuscations (as he might say); and the pleasure these give the capacity audience of longtime fans is palpable.
As prime minister Jim Hacker, Mark Owen-Taylor has the energetic earnestness and cheery confidence of a man totally out of his depth and without a snorkel, but not a clue that there might be a problem. He's also adept at the essential pomp that comes without even the tiniest bit of circumstance and he and Quast are nicely matched. The show itself has both the problems and pleasures of a half hour TV program recreated for two hours on stage.
Sensibly confined to a one-room setting of the PM's study at Chequers - the UK equivalent of Kirribilli House but without the views - the writers have had to update and expand. The updating puts Jim Hacker in a temporary presidential Euro seat and embroiled in the multi-trillion economic mess otherwise known as the EU. The expansion is another story line involving the foreign minister of Kumranistan and his penchant for teenage school girls. It's an odd one, but does allow for some soul-searching by Hacker (he doesn't find it) and adroit manoeuvres by Sir Humphrey. He's unintentionally impeded in this by the other stalwart of the TV series, his flunkey Bernard (John Lloyd Fillingham) and quite deliberately by a newcomer, the PM's media tart Claire (Caroline Craig). Also dropping by to add to the chaos is the Director-General of the BBC (Tony Llewellyn-Jones) and the Kumrani ambassador (Alex Menglet). Director Tom Gutteridge keeps all these balls in the air with deceptive ease, allowing the script and situations to do what they do best.
Ticket sales prior to opening in each city of its extensive Australian tour suggests the audience for the show is readymade and eager. Fans won't be disappointed, not least because although the late lamented Nigel Hawthorne and Paul Eddington are lodged in the TV memory, the casting of Quast and Owen-Taylor ensures that after a few minutes, the Australians take over and fly with the material and characters. They're also assisted in this by an entirely new take on Bernard. John Lloyd Fillingham banishes thoughts of the lugubrious Derek Fowlds. Lloyd Fillingham places himself in a position of constant quivering keenness via his neatly shod feet - permanently ready to hop to it from the third position - and never lets up in his scene-stealing turn.
Apparently the public service audiences in Canberra loved it - what a surprise - and on opening night in Sydney a clutch of pollies chortled and groaned in recognition too. For the rest of us, the comedy and characters are timeless and the Australian production is totally spiffing.
