Marmion: PM Out of Power and Wit

I'm Sorry, Prime Minister - Apollo Theatre, London

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Man and Boy - National Theatre, London

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Old age comes to us all – well, if we’re lucky. And Jonathan Lynn, celebrated octogenarian co-author of the legendary BBC Yes, Minister comedy series, has certainly been lucky to get so much mileage out of his no less elderly Eighties banger: the political satire starring Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne, written with the late Antony Jay.

Now installed as a ‘final chapter’ in the West End (after a run at Cirencester’s Barn Theatre in 2023), I’m Sorry, Prime Minister stars a grizzled Griff Rhys Jones as the doddery ex-PM Jim Hacker, alongside the exquisite Clive Francis as Sir Humphrey Appleby, his former senior civil servant.

Hacker is now the Master of an Oxford college (improbably) established in his name. Advancing years mean elasticated waistbands, Velcro slippers and a leather reclining chair with foot stool.

Around him is an avalanche of reading material and unsold biographies, with more distant matter reached with the help of a litter picker.

Sir Humphrey, meanwhile – still in old-school Wykehamist (Winchester College) tie and Savile Row pinstripe suit – has been rescued from a home in which he had been incarcerated by his family.

His role is to help Jim retain his Oxonian sinecure after a series of politically incorrect blunders.

Naturally, Sir Humphrey remains an expert in the art of the institutional filibuster.

The difference is that the pair now have Hacker’s reluctant black lesbian care worker Sophie (Stephanie Levi-John) to adjudicate between them.

With the aphrodisiac of Westminster a distant memory, the once formidable set-up has lost much of its cachet. 

I’m Sorry, Prime Minister stars a grizzled Griff Rhys Jones (pictured, right) as the doddery ex-PM Jim Hacker, alongside the exquisite Clive Francis (pictured, left) as Sir Humphrey Appleby, his former senior civil servant

Man and Boy stars Ben Daniels (pictured, right) as Romanian millionaire antihero Gregor Antonescu

We are left in a low-stakes fug, buried under an electric blanket of humorous nostalgia.

Rhys Jones deploys the intellectual acuity of the grunting farmer in Shaun The Sheep. ‘I’m not dead, I’m in the House of Lords!’ remains his best joke.

But the funniest moments belong to Francis – with a little help from the phone on vibrate in his trouser pocket.

Speaking of pockets, in the National Theatre’s revival of Terence Rattigan’s 1963 play Man And Boy, any similarity with today’s high-rolling billionaires who keep politicians in their pockets is entirely deliberate.

The play repurposes its Romanian millionaire antihero Gregor Antonescu to serve as a model of our mixed feelings about the self-serving oligarchs who now rule the 21st century.

Gregor, played with contemporary swagger by Ben Daniels, is on the brink of bankruptcy. 

His crook of a character was the brainchild of Old Harrovian Rattigan, who was inspired by Wall Street big swingers in the 1930s.

Anthony Lau’s provocatively expressionistic production extracts Gregor from the dusty annals of history, in a modern update that sets the action either side of the audience.

With choreographed movement, edgy jazz drumming, and a billboard displaying the actors’ names as if in lights on Broadway, Lau tries to make the play look more daring than it is.

Gregor is styled as a charismatic trickster, speaking in an accent that flits from Brooklyn to Bucharest, while sporting burgundy trousers, braces and monkey boots. 

He’s at once evasive and disconcertingly direct, invading people’s space and leaping onto tables to posture and pontificate. Watching him as he attempts to pull off a fiscal Houdini act is a treat.

The other actors are mere pawns in his game, including rising star Laurie Kynaston as Gregor’s estranged son Basil.

Despite espousing family values, Gregor passes off his son as a rent boy and is more interested in the buzz he gets from manipulating associates, like Malcolm Sinclair’s stodgy millionaire CEO. 

And if you find Daniels’ histrionics irritating, it’s worth recalling that this is how tough guys get things done. It’s the art of the deal, isn’t it?

I’m Sorry, Prime Minister runs until May 9 before a national tour. Man And Boy runs until March 14.

Miles - Southwark Playhouse, London 

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So it turns out that Miles Davis is alive and well and performing in South London. 

That, at least, is how it felt, thanks to Benjamin Akintuyosi’s extraordinary reincarnation of the jazz trumpet legend – first seen at the Edinburgh Fringe last year.

Miles is a 90-minute potted history of the man – including tales of Dave Brubeck, first love Juliette Greco, and Davis’s travails with heroin alongside fellow junkie Charlie Parker.

And it’s all told through the device of Miles appearing to a contemporary musician, desperate to learn how he turned breath and brass into sonic velvet.

Akintuyosi’s performance doesn’t stretch to playing the trumpet – that’s left to his talented fan (Jay Phelps). 

Yet he gives the most extraordinary performance: more rebirth than impersonation, nailing that rasping voice perfectly. 

He can move, too, showing us how Davis’s sense of rhythm was inspired by tap dance. 

Phelps has to botch a few bars, to cue Miles’s advice. But he also gets to play something close to the master at his smoky best. 

Benjamin Akintuyosi (pictured) performs an 'extraordinary reincarnation' of jazz trumpet legend Miles Davis, Patrick Marmion writes

As Davis says: ‘Tone is the first and last thing anybody hears. Everything else is just notes in between.’

To know what he means by that, you have to catch Oliver Kaderbhai’s seamless production. It made me, a long-lapsed trumpet player, understand Miles Davis’s genius all over again.

Until March 7.