Harry Hill’s musical takes bite out of Blair
Tony! (Park Theatre, London)
Verdict: Joyfully profane tonic ★★★★★
Dead Lies (Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, and touring)
Verdict: The truth will out ★★★☆☆
ALL HAIL Harry Hill and his musical writing partner Steve Brown. At last they have purged me of the pain of those ten long years under Tony Blair’s New Labour — thanks to their gleefully childish and daringly taboo rock opera spoof of Tony’s life. I was laughing so much I struggled to swallow my beer.
Tony! — or The Tony Blair Rock Musical, to give it its full title — is two hours (plus interval, to savour) of vintage comic anarchy created by Hill, the TV comedian famed for his big specs and even bigger collars. From the moment Tony, played by Charlie Baker, is born — a big cheesy grin already plastered on his face — I knew I was in for a treat.
And so it proved, with fizzingly scathing lyrics from the raucous opening title number to Holly Sumpton, sashaying on as a saucy Scouser, singing a cod French chanson Ma Nom Est Cherie.
Nor is the show constrained by sacred cows. Like the best satire, it is cruel. With trousers round his ankles, Gary Trainor’s Gordon Brown curtly reminds Tony that it’s not image but substance that counts, before he goes on to sing his gloriously preposterous theme tune, Macroeconomics, sucking in breath between lines like an astronaut on a space walk.
The show is so packed with joyfully withering mirth that Baker’s Tony almost gets lost. And yet, that 100-watt grin shines through the thicket of characters who we have long loved to hate.
Howard Samuels is particularly brilliant as oleaginous Peter Mandelson, who mutates into a raving Dick Cheney and eventually a cussing Alastair Campbell in a Tam o’ Shanter.
Martin Johnston also fearlessly pushes his luck, first as Neil Kinnock in an orange toupee; then David Blunkett with rolling eyes and a randy (stuffed) guide dog.
Moving like greased lightning in Peter Rowe’s vaudevillian production, Kaye Brown checks in as the improbably libidinous Robin Cook with a truly ghastly beard; and Rosie Strobel is a hilarious John Prescott, dismissing Scotland as being ‘too far north to be properly Northern’.
MADISoN Swan delights, too, as the eyelid-batting ghost of Lady Di, who holds Tony spellbound from beyond the grave.
Satisfyingly, Hill and Brown don’t duck the issues of Tony’s four wars (Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq); or his backbenchers trade-off with a ban on fox hunting.
The dagger of anger beneath the cloak of hilarity is finally disclosed in the riotously profane closing number The Whole World Is Run By A********.
Clearly this won’t be to everyone’s taste — least of all Tony’s — and many who voted for him may also find it hard to stomach. But this terrific show is all the better for it.
■ A VERY different kind of PM is seeking our vote in crime novelist Hilary Bonner’s stage thriller Dead Lies.
Played by Holby City’s Jeremy Edwards, he’s called Peter George and he’s campaigning on a ticket of truth and integrity for the People First party. ‘No more lies!’, he promises. You could almost laugh, but of course there are skeletons in his closet . . .
often very clever, but just as often extravagantly ludicrous, Bonner’s plot needs a good deal of pruning. She isn’t helped by Joe Harmston’s awkwardly staged production, which reveals Peter’s 25year-old crime in overhead projections from the off. For gawd’s sake, keep us guessing! Much the most interesting character is Alicia Charles as Peter’s ambitious American Press secretary, Kate, who drives both him and the plot. Portia Booroff is a ticking bomb as Peter’s submissive wife, Jo. And although Andrew McDonald’s shabby Fleet Street hack looks the part, he’s subject to a highly implausible plot twist. As for Edwards’ party leader, I couldn’t figure out if he was too good to be true, or too true to be good. Either way, as a portrait of a man who thinks he can get away with anything, his hour has certainly come.
■ For tour details, see deadlies.co.uk