I'm guessing I've seen each episode of the original sitcoms three or four times over the last (good grief) thirty years, although I probably didn't see them all on the first run. Curiously I've never felt them dated - even in the The Thick of It era - as some element has chimed with a news item either just before or after and become relevant again. But whilst it tapped into our belief about the intransigence of bureaucracy and the civil service, the joy was in the language. For me seeing it as a play was a bit of a fear - I get a very fixed view of voices, especially from the radio, and so (say), I didn't get on with film versions of Hitch Hikers Guide or The Lord of the Rings, because the voices were all wrong. Similarly, Tamsin Grieg remains a six foot tall leggy blonde, which makes watching her impossible. And with Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne both dead and Derek Fowlds old enough to play the Hawthorne role, recasting is necessary.
Henry Goodman is closest to the supercilious Sir Humphrey, perhaps too supercilious, where Hawthorne felt effortless, and he pulls off the various set piece long speeches with aplomb - and we are toyed with as a couple of long speeches get interrupted by Jim Hacker. David Haig plays Hacker with more anger than Eddington brought to the role of prime minister, but then he is in hotter water, but also more despair. He has to turn on a sixpence, as he moves from self-congratulations because he has been brave, to self-denigration because he has been brave. The stakes also have to be raised because there was a trajectory in the shift from Yes Minister to Yes Prime Minister where the more increasingly experienced Hacker got to win some weeks. And failure, of course, is funnier than success. Meanwhile Bernard, naive in the original and still with ethics, is here much more of a moraliser, and has fewer of the scene stealing lines than the original. Something about Jonathan Slinger doesn't quite work in the role - less likable somehow.
To fill two hours a more complex plot than normal is required: a prime minister in a coalition with a small majority, facing back bench revolts and hearing of an illegal immigrant on his Chequers staff, is chairing EU crisis talks. A solution is offered - an obscure former Soviet state is offering trillions of euros in return for promised purchases of oil and the building of a pipeline across all of Europe. The snag comes when their foreign minister requests an underaged girl to be procured for as the deal maker - will the state turn pimp to save its ass? In an age of extreme rendition and waterboarding, of duckhouse expense claims and free rail travel for mistressese, I'm not sure this would be as bigger jump as it might have been a couple of decades ago. All too often staire feels like documentary.
But the verbal and political battles are fun and interweave, even if I was ahead of the characters in one of the solutions which get explored. I felt sorry for the actor that had to come on quite so late and impersonate Paxman, although if this at least had been a Martha Kearny it would have added a second woman to the otherwise all male cast (Emily Joyce as the special advisor felt a bit of a weak link, and Hacker's wife is not mentioned). The self-congratulation after the live interview could, of course, have been undercut by Hacker forgetting his mike.
This is, I think, a play that works in its own terms, independent of the original, and I'm guessing Jonathan Lynn as director and co-writer was able to add lines at the last minute to reflect more recent events. However, I think the sitcom version is still sharper.
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