Mercurial Boris is a nightmare for a playwright

IN TIMES of political turmoil, pity the satirists. First The Thick of It writer Armando Iannucci complained that the state of the country was far too absurd to belong in his farcical comedy, then I a n Hi s l o p told us that the constantly changing state of play makes editing Private Eye ever more complicated. And now the man behind a Boris Johnson comedy is going back to the drawing board.

Next week sees a new run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for Boris: World King, a play about our former Mayor. When the show had a run at Trafalgar Studios in April, Johnson’s career seemed stable. But now the plot has thickened.

“I have written six different versions in the past month,” its author Tom Crawshaw told us last night, “as the story of Boris has changed six times.” In the post-Brexit weeks, he says, “our play was about the leadership contest in the summer”. But then Boris “got to t h e mo me n t o f expec t ation and baulked at it”. The play then became about how he had “given up politics and gone into entertainment”.

Then he became Foreign Secretary and it changed again into a consideration of his future. “Is he going to be PM or has he given up on that?” Crawshaw wonders. “How is he going to exist in the Foreign Office without offending people? Did he make a deal, was it a surprise, or is this what he wanted?”

Some bookmakers consider Boris the best bet for the first resignation from Theresa May’s new Cabinet. So would a seventh redraft be possible? “I’m on standby,” Crawshaw sighs. “Luckily our actor is very good at improv and changing at the last minute.”

Just like Boris.