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Yes, Prime Minister Reopens at the Gielgud Theatre
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Political comedy Yes, Prime Minister has opened this week at the Gielgud Theatre, extending its second triumphant West End run by eight weeks until Saturday 19th November 2011. The stage adaptation of the much-loved BBC TV series has proved a big hit with audiences, with a storyline about a country facing financial meltdown perhaps proving more enduring than the writers imagined! The show has moved the few yards down Shaftesbury Avenue from the Apollo Theatre where Jerusalem has returned following a Tony Award-winning Broadway season. |
They Say: Yes, Prime Minister ReviewsMuch has changed since the play first appeared. We're now more savvy about the strains of the kind of coalition government Hacker heads. The cast is also different, with the result that the tone is closer to the original TV series than downright farce. Richard McCabe makes Hacker a genial ditherer with a shrewd political instinct who reminds us that, in politics, communicative gifts are often more important than competence. It's a good performance nicely offset by Simon Williams as a silk-smooth Sir Humphrey, who says of the British civil service: "Our success is founded upon being free from the taint of professionalism." Chris Larkin as the PM's private secretary suggests a decent man caught up in a world of Machiavellian scheming, and Charlotte Lucas invests a policy adviser with the right air of unscrupulous glamour. **** Michael Billington - The Guardian (read the full review here) That engaging old smoothie Simon Williams may lack the gleaming, high-definition panache that Henry Goodman brought to the role of the devious Cabinet Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby. What he does splendidly catch, however, is the languid, public-school superiority of the character who regards the PM as a distressingly common and slow-witted oik. There are fine turns, too, from Chris Larkin as the harassed principal private secretary, Bernard, and Kevork Malikyan as the wily Kumranistan ambassador, never more dangerous than when he is being absolutely charming. *** Charles Spencer - The Telegraph (read the full review here) |
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Yes, Prime Minister Ticket Offer - Top Seats £39.50
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