Harry Hill’s latest musical traces Tony Blair’s bizarre career from student pacifist to war-mongering plaything of the United States. With co-writer Steve Brown, Hill has created a ramshackle, hasty-looking production that deliberately conceals the slickness and concentrated energy of its witty lyrics, superb visuals and terrific music.
The last thing it wants to seem is sophisticated and it starts off with a parade of New Labour grandees, all grotesquely overblown. John Prescott is a violent northern drunkard who wants to punch everyone in the face – including the Scots because ‘they’re too far north to be proper north’. Robin Cook is a cerebral sex maniac. David Blunkett gets pulled around by his guide dog because, being blind, he hasn’t fitted the lead correctly. Even John Smith’s fatal heart attack is mocked but the show avoids the charge of bad taste because it has a child-like innocence and a spirit of zany escapism.
Harry Hill could never be snide about anything and this show just wants to have fun. Princess Diana enters as a pouting bundle of guileless sexuality and Tony swiftly tries to seduce her until he’s halted by Cherie (an interesting rumour, but probably groundless). Tony himself is portrayed as an empty vessel, a clueless grinning drifter, whose quest for power is a substitute for his vanished hopes of rock-star fame. Cherie has been reimagined as a seductive black-clad chanteuse who ensnares her husband with a love song, ‘Ma Nom est Cherie’, (although ‘mon nom’ might have been better).
The show pulls together madcap humour from anywhere, and some of the sketches reveal strange shafts of truth. Saddam Hussein is portrayed as a New York stand-up with a stick-on moustache and a Groucho Marx cigar. Could Saddam be a Jewish comedian? Why not? Give it a go and see if it works.
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