In a production set to rival The Thick of It and In the Loop, a hilarious cast present a comedy proving that recent political events really have been a joke. The drama unfolds in the offices of Matt Cooper, a completely fictional Liberal Democrat leader, who is struggling in vain to protect his beloved party against Tory pressure.
Jo Caulfield and Phill Jupitus headline the cast, but some of the lesser known actors are bound to become big names in the future. Jupitus takes on the role of a wonderfully eccentric Tory MP, with all the flamboyance of Boris Johnson, but with a touch more brutality. As he appears in the various Lib Dem offices as if by magic, he announces that his comedy hero is Nikita Khrushchev who, in his opinion, was ‘really quite funny when he wasn’t murdering small children or invading Eastern European countries’. As he offers valuable advice to the helpless politicians, he breathes a line of comedic gold: ‘you can always trust the Tories’.
Alistair Barrie takes on the role of the Lib Dem with some integrity, an exception lost amongst the vast majority who seem to be entirely lacking any political principles whatsoever. He describes his day job as ‘defending true Lib Dem values while handcuffed to an oil slick of Tories’.
Six side-splittingly funny comedians give their take on what life must be like as a coalition member dealing with public scandal and resignations. The show contains a perfect balance of tongue-in-cheek one liners and laugh out loud sketches, such as Cooper trying and succeeding to use the same political jargon to communicate with three different people on the telephone at once. As I left the performance I heard the news that the real-life coalition was drawing its last breath, and it became clear that the near-future, fictional world created in the play may in fact be becoming a reality. This ever so topical production really is political satire at its best.
