Yes, Prime Minister

Yes, Prime Minister is ideal fare for community theatre – familiar characters, farcical situations, and plenty of laughs. Britain is in crisis with spiraling debt, crippling unemployment, and a fragile coalition government. Help is at hand if the Prime Minister will sign a trillion pound bail-out deal with the oil rich Kumranistan, a country that nobody can find on the map.

Politics can be boring but this TV series managed to make it a fertile ground for comedy, with an inept Prime Minister, a cabinet secretary who speaks gobble-de-gook a lot of the time, a private secretary caught between the two, and a curvaceous female special advisor. Based on the BBC2’s series, which ran from 1980 to 1984, and its sequel from 1986 to 1988, the original authors have stitched together several episodes from the series to make the play, updating the dialogue and situations. If it seems dated in this post Covid 19 period it is, but it’s still funny as it mines laughs, frequently non-PC, from various situations.

The fun is in taking the mickey out of the pompous and pretentious in British life. Add in the Kumranistan’s Foreign Secretary’s request for three hookers before he’ll sign the bail-out deal, and it ups the ante.

Best performance came from Michael Lawrence as the gobble-de-gook speaking Sir Humphrey Bishop. A master at obfuscation and manipulation, Lawrence was the epitome of the British Civil Service in a nicely layered performance. The fact that he also directed the show was another plus. The production had marvelous pace.

Georgiana Mannion played the smart-cookie Claire with aplomb as she slyly manipulated the situations (especially the illegal cook’s daughter) to her own advantage. And attention was certainly paid to her cool red high-heels.

Mark Scott’s Bernard managed to be fussily pedantic as the voice of reality between the Prime Minister and his secretary. Hugo Foong showed promise in his first ever acting role as the Kumranistan Ambassador, whilst the man from the BBC was marvelously pompous in the hands of Mark Jeffery.

Gary Kliger’s exaggerated performance of Prime Minister Jim Hacker belonged more to a melodrama than a drawing room comedy, but the audience loved him.

The office set was outstanding, well-dressed and lit. Kudos to Lawrence. He earned his appreciative applause at the finale.

Peter Pinne