Blond ambition | 23 May 2019

The opening of Jonathan Maitland’s new play about Boris purports to be based on real events. Just before the referendum, the Tory maverick invited some chums over to help him decide whether to opt for Leave or Remain. Mrs Johnson was present along with Michael and Sarah Gove and the Evening Standard’s owner, Evgeny Lebedev. For a bit of fun, the writer adds spectral appearances from three ex-prime ministers, Blair, Thatcher and Churchill. This is amusing at first but it slows the play down because the fantasy figures can’t affect the real-life action.

There are dazzling performances here. Tim Wallers plays Evgeny as a name-dropping simpleton with naked ankles and an ultra-camp gait. Wonderful. Mrs Johnson (Davina Moon) is portrayed as a Farageist headbanger who thinks migrants cause crime. Will Barton gives an eerily accurate portrait of Boris without any of the harrumphing, finger-wagging, hair-tousling tactics usually deployed by his lookalikes. Dugald Bruce-Lockhart is a sensational actor but he’s unsuited to the role of the ironic, super-subtle, mischief-loving Michael Gove. He plays him as an earnest plodder. And the writer overindulges in Guardian-inspired untruths about Boris. We see him mocking Huw Edwards’s Welsh accent and then saying: ‘I apologise to everyone in Llanelli.’ But Boris is smarter and more courteous than that. The first act ends with a crass ‘power-for-power’s-sake’ speech that lacks any psychological accuracy. A dramatist should consider the possibility that Boris may want to lead because he loves the country and not just himself. If his patriotism is insincere, then he must secretly despise patriots whose feelings are genuine. And in that case, a hint of this malignity would have leaked out by now because Boris is notoriously careless of his public image.