By Dominic Maxwell
The last time that Alan B'stard was on our television screens the nation was growing itchy at its sleazy Government, the health service was in disarray, and greed-is-good materialism was the spirit of the age. Fourteen years later, we have come full circle — which has prompted the writers Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran to reinvent their Conservative creation as a new Labour kingpin.
The New Statesman: Episode 2006 — The Blair B'stard Project allows Rik Mayall to bring to the stage the Rabelaisian rascal that he played in four series on ITV. And even on a clunky first night, with lines going off-message and props defying the whip, it's a pleasure to see him at play. He gurns and phwoars with delectable vitality, conveying his preposterous persona with constant comic commitment.
Shame he doesn't have more to work with. The TV series was always pretty blunt in its anti-Tory sentiment, but at least it moved at a click. Here, the play's anti-Tony sentiment can't always sustain two hours in B'stard's office at No 9 Downing Street.
The gag is that his rampant selfishness would fit right in with the current regime. B'stard, we're told, is the man who gave Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell their orders, the new Labour Zelig responsible for everything from abolishing Clause Four to polishing off John Smith.
B'stard's decadence remains enjoyable, but the satire is duff. There are crude gibes at stupid Americans, digs at Blair's lust for popularity, potshots at Cherie's looks. They get laughs, but more because they resemble jokes we already know than because they ring true.
And the plotting is as promiscuous as the protagonist. The fixed setting needs a farcical accumulation of woes for B'stard. Instead, he picks off his problems one by one, dealing in turn with his socialist stooge Frank, his slutty wife Sarah (Marsha Fitzalan, reprising her TV role with ease), Condoleezza Rice and a terrorist called Habibi — both of whom want the WMDs that Alan was supposed to have hidden in Iraq.
Marks and Gran are pros, though, and while the oneliners may not always score at least there are plenty of them. And Jennie Darnell's production is bound to get zippier as it travels the land over the next few months.
But Mayall gets more fun from a rebellious french window than his writers get from new Labour. His remarkable rapport with the crowd suggests that the show would benefit from a more radical reinvention, using the sort of direct address to the audience that powers Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist.
A devastating critique of the status quo? 'Fraid not. But Mayall's star power ensures some pure, apolitical pleasures.