REVIEW: ‘Yes, Prime Minister, it was a delightful show’

STAGE reworkings of TV favourites are notoriously difficult to pull off.
The cast captured in full flow during their performance of Yes, Prime Minister at the Windmill Entertainment CentrePHOTO: Rosey PurchaseThe cast captured in full flow during their performance of Yes, Prime Minister at the Windmill Entertainment CentrePHOTO: Rosey Purchase
The cast captured in full flow during their performance of Yes, Prime Minister at the Windmill Entertainment CentrePHOTO: Rosey Purchase

Littlehampton’s Windmill Entertainment Centre has seen a few in recent years with varying degrees of success. So it was with a little trepidation that I went to see TJ Productions’ version of the 1980’s smash-hit series Yes, Prime Minister.

Interestingly, this performance wasn’t just a replica of the TV series.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Writers Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn recognise the power balance inside politics has radically changed since the 80s with PM Jim Hacker (Steve Wallace) now more presidential, while being ever more dependent on others.

The result is to push satire successfully into the realm of farce. Hacker is now governing an uneasy coalition and faces a weekend at Chequers (recreated on stage by Trevor Whittle).

He has to cope, in the age of 24-hour news, with a divided cabinet, a sinking pound and the partial collapse of a European conference.

Rescue seems to come when an oil-rich central Asian state offers a $10bn loan to build a pipeline that will zigzag through Europe. The deal is thrown into disarray when the country’s foreign secretary asks to be supplied with three women to enjoy a night of passion with.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The dilemma propels the second half into the wilder shores of lunacy – which is well controlled by its writers.

The play, under Mike Wells’ careful direction, becomes a study in Hacker’s mounting desperation, which Steve Wallace brilliantly embodies.

He has a wonderful trick of lunging forward with a decisive cry of, ‘I must do something!’ and then staring in panic at his team of advisers.

Even if Sir Humphrey is no longer the puppet-master he once was, Tim Kimber invested him with a Machiavellian smoothness and shows an astonishing capacity to reel off mystifying soliloquies on a single breath.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Ben Cassan also turned the loyal Bernard into a troubled moralist and was convincing throughout, while Jane Kimber conveyed the rising power of the special adviser who usually gives bad advice.

Strong support came from Julie Waite as a female Paxman-like interviewer, Mike Wells as a self-satisfied director general of the BBC and a particularly well crafted turn from Ian Weston as an urbane Oxford educated Ambassador of ‘Kumranistan’. The point of this buoyant farce is that it locates its madness in a world we all recognise.

TJ Productions’ version was a delight thoroughly enjoyed by the small but responsive audience. Did they succeed in replicating the quality of the TV show?

Why ‘Yes, Prime Minister’.

Related topics: