2 – 6 June

Any qualms one might have had about watching a couple of favourite characters being dragged out of retirement for one last bout are soon calmed by a pairing that carry their respective batons with confidence and style. The duo have lost none of the intellectually combative sparkle from their television progenitors and it is a great credit to the quality of the writing that although there are new faces to the curious Downing Street forced marriage, the characters shine through with a joyful familiarity. The glossy cynicism is still there to delight an audience eager for some unpatronising banter.

Shaking a weak, but defiant fist at senility and irrelevance, ex-Prime Minister, Jim Hacker (Simon Rouse) finds that the happy tide which had brought him to the comfort of his present position has withdrawn leaving him somewhat stranded. The world of woke concerns and cancel culture having seeped into the Oxford college bearing his name and threatening his comfortable sinecure as master, Hacker is forced to call on the combative intellect of his former Permanent Secretary, Sir Humphrey (Clive Francis) in the hope of finding some loophole in the arguments of those calling for his removal.

The play leads us straight onto the eggshell carpet of modern linguistic sensibilities as Jim interviews a new care worker in the form of Sophie, a black, lesbian graduate of the same Oxford college. Whilst no stormtrooper for the cause, Sophie (Princess Donnough) has enough backbone to stand up to and gently, but firmly correct the two old has-beens in matters of political correctness. As the two men had, at one time of recent memory, had their hands on the steering wheel of state, the irony is not lost.

Clive Francis exudes Sir Humphrey’s intellectual self-confidence without any diminution of the facility for sparkling linguistic and logical obfuscation which last night earned him an appreciative round of applause from the audience. Jim Hacker for his part is as bemused by the new realities of society outside his college as his younger self was by the Byzantine machinations of the civil service.

 Jonathan Lynn who also directs his own script clearly has a fondness for his creations and looks for the comedy in their new guise as senior citizens. The play touches on important themes of academic freedom and free speech, giving both sides of the debate a light airing without coming down definitively on one side or the other. In doing so it does as much as a play may perhaps reasonably do which is ask some questions and provoke some serious discussion.

★★★★☆      Graham Wyles   3 June 2026 

photographer’s credit @ Michael Wharley