'I'm Sorry, Prime Minister' review — Griff Rhys Jones and Clive Francis are wonderful sparring partners in this witty comedy

Read our review of I'm Sorry, Prime Minister, written by Jonathan Lynn, now in performances at the Apollo Theatre to 9 May.

Summary

• I'm Sorry Prime Minister comes to the Apollo Theatre
• The play continues the beloved Yes Minister TV and stage franchise
• Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby reunite when the former gets into trouble
• Griff Rhys Jones and Clive Francis make for wonderful sparring partners

Time catches up with us all, and so it has with Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby, the defining double act at the heart of the Yes, Minister comic franchise, which has lasted almost a half-century across TV and the stage. I watched the series whilst growing up in New York and marvelled at its wit – and its view of parliamentary politics as a world entirely distinct from American government closer to home.

So it may come as a surprise to learn that this latest iteration, written and co-directed (with Michael Gyngell) by the series’ co-creator Jonathan Lynn, isn’t really about politics at all. Sure, the Brexit debate gets a full and rather tedious airing, and there are scattered references to austerity, not to mention the chaos, and worse, that mark out public life just now. But the actual subject of I’m Sorry, Prime Minister is the sheer fact of old age, and the senescence to which these two chums refuse to surrender without a fight.

Lee Newby’s capacious set – hugely inviting for all its visual disorder – opens onto Griff Rhys Jones’s terminally dishevelled Hacker announcing on the phone, “I’m not dead; I’m in the House of Lords.” Thus defiance is established early on as a motif that will sorely test this onetime Prime Minister: it seems the Oxford University grandee’s perch is at risk due to some avowed beliefs that have put Paul Eddington’s original creation at risk of cancellation.

And so we get Clive Francis’s onetime cabinet secretary Humphrey – the Nigel Hawthorne role - along as an ally, sparring partner, and joint participant in a geriatric bromance which goes so far as to suggest that the two might well move in together. In which case, cue a revival of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, with which this play could run in repertory. (With reference to the late, great Hawthorne, one should note this play opening back-to-back with a West End revival of Shadowlands, the William Nicholson play that brought Hawthorne a 1991 Tony in its premiere staging.)

The give-and-take between the two gents is really it for plot in an evening concerned more with striking attitudes and delivering position papers. Very much contributing to the latter is Hacker’s Black lesbian carer, Sophie (the likeable Stephanie Levi-John), herself a bus driver’s daughter and Oxford grad who keeps reminding the senior white men in her midst that she is a care worker, not a sex worker: are the two that easily confused?

In a play in which characters are quick to admonish one another for being patronising, Sophie is patronisingly conceived as the voice of clarity and wisdom, who is also capable of lapsing into a recitation of Ozymandias. Levi-John sails through such virtue signalling with charm and ease.

This is not before Sophie finds herself having to identify Percy Bysshe Shelley or correct Hacker about the proper surname of James Baldwin, of whom this self-pitying man of stature is for some reason clueless. Debates ensue about trigger warnings and safe spaces for students, alongside a reminder from Sir Humphrey that parliament at heart is theatre in another form.

William Chubb completes the quartet as an emissary of bad news, whilst sight gags fall to Hacker’s misplaced glasses being – guess where – on his head and Sir Humphrey having fun with the stairlift to one side of the set. Oh, and Hacker doesn’t always zip up his fly.

Longer and more leisurely than needed, the play trades on nostalgia for its estimable brand and benefits from a genuinely top-class performance from Francis, who turns 80 later this year. This venerable actor twice earns applause with his rapid-fire delivery of Sir Humphrey’s runaway sentences, and in a play concerned with the faltering faculties that come with age, Francis very much gives the welcome impression that he could well go on forever.

I'm Sorry, Prime Minister is at the Apollo Theatre to 9 May. Book I'm Sorry, Prime Minister tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: I'm Sorry, Prime Minister (Photos by Johan Persson)