YES PRIME MINISTER AT PLYMOUTH THEATRE ROYAL
The world is now a very different place from the 1980s and much of 247’s readership probably wouldn’t be old enough to remember the popular sitcom “Yes Prime Minister”. Yet so much of what was popular in that decade is current again today. The A Team has been reinvented for the big screen, Duran Duran have just released a new album and Yes Prime Minister has transferred to stage. The original series was concerned with Prime Minster, Jim Hacker, and his ongoing class struggle with his aide, Sir Humphrey and the stage play picks up on that dynamic again.
Actor Richard McCabe, who has inherited the role of the long-suffering PM talked to 247 about why feels this story is relevant for audiences of today.
I think it’s a show for everyone. It has great comedy and more than a little farce. Older members of the audience will come to it with the idea of comparing it to the original but I really want to see a younger audience and how they relate to the material.
This material has been brought up to date for modern times then?
Oh yes, the government that Jim Hacker is leading now is a coalition government so you immediately get some reflection of where we are today. It’s very true to the spirit of the original and yet it’s very much set in the 21st century. Jim’s main advisor is a female spin-doctor who tries to steer him in the right direction – that’s a character that would never have existed in the 80s
In this era, I guess politics is quite a different animal to what it was almost thirty years ago?
It certainly is but the writers of the play, Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, are the same people who wrote the sitcom in the 80s and they always said that they were writing about politics itself – rather than specific politicians and parties. That’s what makes this show so relevant. They actually wrote most of the script about eighteen months before the debut of the show and so much of what they talked about has become true. That’s because they have such a strong understanding of their subject. And it’s why it’s so relevant to today’s audience.
So they pre-empted a lot of what’s going on in the political arena today?
Oh yes, my favourite quote from them is that they never chase the news . . . instead the news chases them. Politics doesn’t really change and, if you truly understand how it works, then you can make it clear for others. Some of the situations that occur in this show are not a million miles away from some of the stories that have come to light in the papers over the last few months. If you’ve never seen an episode of the sitcom before there’s still a lot here for you to recognise and also a lot to make you laugh.
It’s a funny play then . . . despite its subject matter?
I’d say BECAUSE of its subject matter. The first half of the play finds its humour in a very witty script with all kinds of one-liners . . . while the second half almost descends into a kind of farce that will have the audience in stitches.
The play is running at the Theatre Royal from 18th April to 23rd April so join the constituency of people who became fans of the show during its West End run.
