By Mike Smith
3/5 Stars
It says as much about politics as the writers of the New Statesman that Rik Mayall's revolting Alan B'Stard slips so easily from a bastion of '70s and '80s Thatcherism to Blairite New Labour.
From his secret office at No 9, Downing Street our immoral schemer asserts, "I didn't join the Labour Party. The Labour Party joined me: Labour Nouveau."
And so history starts to repeat itself. B'Stard is the malevolent power behind the scenes whose two driving passions are personal wealth and sexual gratification.
In the drive for both he has engineered the myth of the 45-minute threat to Britain from Iraq to start the war and push up the price of his oil shares. As he strives to join the world's trillionaire club he now provokes a strike by North Sea oil rig workers and persuades the gullible Americans to invade Norway.
The background to his personal ambitions is a right-wing government that has lost its popular appeal, rocked by financial and sexual scandals and challenged by revitalised opposition with an attractive young leader. Sound familiar?
Of course the MP is somewhat more rotund and greyer but some of the characters in this New Labour world are also transposed from the TV series. For example, rather than have the dim-witted upper-class assistant Piers we have a working-class hero assistant Frank, played by Garry Cooper, who is just as easily manipulated by B'Stard.
The staged violence that was a hallmark of Mayall in The Young Ones and Bottom and carried through to The New Statesman is also here, such as slamming Frank's fingers in a filing cabinet and laying a mantrap for him in his desk drawer.
The lecherous MP's eye, well groin to be more exact, is directed at the Blair Babes in the shapely form of Flora, played by Helen Baker, who was attracted to New Labour from the Young Conservatives by Tony.
Tony doesn't appear on stage except as the voice of Jon Culshaw, speaking from a packing case in which the Prime Minister has been incarcerated, seemingly having been kidnapped. Of course this is also a B'Stard plot which brings in such issues as Middle Eastern terrorism, the role of the BBC, the death of Dr David Kelly and the Hutton Report.
In fact, so many other political issues are thrown into the conspiratorial mix combined with a fast moving and totally ridiculous plot, that the second half of the show does become a little farcical rather than satirical. Most of the strong satirical writing comes in the first half, including more topical lines, such as the 15 marines who tried to join the Iranian navy and the Russian former agent Alexander Litvinenko killed with Polonium-210. B'Stard quips that he thought Polonium-210 was a night bus out of Warsaw.
The scenes where he manipulates a miniskirted Condoleezza Rice, played by Alexandra Gunn, are hilarious, largely playing on the cliché that the Americans' knowledge of the world beyond their shores is non-existent. But less effective is his sparring with his soon-to-be ex-wife Arabella Lucretia B'Stard, played by Lysette Anthony. While she remains the money-grabber that we remember well from the TV series she lacks the biting dry wit.
Writers Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran keep just on the acceptable side of taking the mickey out of political correctness while allowing B'Stard to take a snipe at everyone from single mothers ("You can't blame them all on me", B'Stard quips) to common people (such as the audience). Mayall is, of course, the star attraction and in many ways this is a one-man show with the other players largely props. And he is genuinely a hoot with his grimaces and gestures, gags and even gaffs. He is apparently well known for fluffing his lines and he does indeed mess up a few and can't keep a straight face at times, culminating in giving the guffawing audience the V sign on a number of occasions.
Being a live show the humour and the language is far, far stronger than anything you would see on our TV sets. This includes B'Stard, not realising his assistant is holding a mobile phone call from the Queen, continues with a tirade that ends with the word "You are a sad old xxxx." Having realised who is on the phone he takes the call and explains he wasn't referring to her. Don't worry, she tells him, she hears far worse from Phil when he is on the toilet. Oh dear, we have sunk to toilet humour.
The show runs until tomorrow.