The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson, The Park Theatre

Yes, the impressions of Johnson and Tony Blair are remarkable, the impression of Margaret Thatcher is better than any I EVER could conceive, and the satire of Johnson's craven desire to be PM, specifically, and of the general lack of seriousness of the age, are rendered with utter precision. But first and foremost, this is hilarious.

Some spoilers follow. . .

I recall some wit saying about Johnson that "everybody likes him except the people who know him," but the thing about this show is it never goes deep enough for us to dislike him.

This is a broad comedy on the level of "Man with 2 Guvnors," in that the central character, while looking and sounding like Johnson, is amusingly driven solely by base motives. Johnson pursues being PM like a fat person pursues a sandwich, or like a lazy person falls asleep on the job, or like Ryan attends a Tom Hiddleston opening (of a play). This type of behaviour is the mainstay of all broad comedy, and big laughs, because we all have base motives. In comedies, characters like this make us laugh and shed our pretensions, and because we laugh, we tend to like such characters.

This show briefly looks at going deeper, when it shows us Johnson ruffling his hair into a deliberate mess for the media. This could suggest a more Machiavellian soul, with an internal compass that is less instinctively base, more deliberate, a person capable of slowing down for long enough to realise that his actions may ruin countless lives, yet ruin them anyway. But we never really pursue that more deliberate path, and Johnson's actions here seem to be by and large those of hilariously unthinking appetite. Consequently, I warmed to Will Barton's Johnson, just as I warmed to James Corden in "Guvnors," or to Jim Carrey in the movie "Dumb and Dumber." Therefore, weirdly, although "Last Temotation" is a lacerating critique of Johnson's craven political appetite, it also plays into his hands by making him appear more relatable (and "authentic") than he may appear to those who actually know him.

Anyway, Maitland's play, with one half set in the recent past, and one half set a decade in the future, creates an ingenious structural symmetry that allows us to revisit Johnson's character traits, in a way that proves the adage that much of comedy is repetition. Or as stand-up comedy instruction manuals suggest, "repetition with variation."

Will Barton masters the slippy slidey way Johnson speaks, his amiable perplexed frown, and his bumbling along. It's a beauty of a comedy creation that results in belly laughs and anchors this comedy in such a way that I think everyone will laugh with recognition, leavers and remainers alike.

In addition to Barton's essential central turn, Tim Waller is riotous as Tony Blair, open-faced, uber-ingratiating, fake-hesitant, persistent as a rat nibbling on cheese, an absolute hoot!

And Steve Nallon's graceful and imperious Margaret Thatcher is beyond-belief in every way, in vocal inflection, posture, everything, she is ALIVE again. I realised later why I found him so perfect - he is in fact the man who showed me what Thatcher's physicality was like, donkey's years ago, through his creation of her on the TV show, "Spitting Image."

So, all in all, a comedy that hits hard with belly laughs in the second half, as it pays off the elegant set-ups of the first half, a comedy that hits it's satirical targets squarely and accurately, but probably too benignly to actually damage it's target.

4 stars.

Saw the matinee yesterday having booked later than I'd have liked owing to planning to see something else in this slot (Napoli, Brooklyn in Guildford, but it had sold so poorly there that I couldn't face being one of so few), so I could only get what looked like a poor seat - side stalls - but which turned out to be absolutely fine with no sightline issues. I was swayed by the prospect of a post-matinee Q & A with the author and various others including Misha Glenny and Michael Coveney.

The play was quite amusing but not that biting and I've seen better by Jonathan Maitland but it was entertaining enough and the unusually full house (almost sold out) for a weekday matinee helped create a good atmosphere. The post-show discussion, though too short as they always are, was almost more worthwhile if very uncomfortable as it went on as it soon grew heated due to an audience member continually heckling the panellists, making as if to leave and then sitting down again. I was squirming simply through being present but when the discussion could take place, I heard some interesting views and insights.

So not a must-see but a couple of hours of harmless fun if you fancy it - and clearly very topical as a plot development in the second act had actually happened for real almost at the same time.

Well, this was superficially entertaining tonight but ultimately I was disappointed by this.

The first act is good, with lots of use of known information (a lot of it from Tim Shipman's book All Out War). Great portrayals of the main characters although I thought the main Lebedev joke was overplayed. It's all a bit panto but well done.

For me it utterly loses its way in Act Two - in repeating some of the 2016 tropes, it begs familiarity but offers no great insight. I think there is potentially an issue about reality overtaking art in this context - Maitland says in the programme that anything that happens while the play is running happens "during the interval" but there are aspects of the later premise which cannot ring true now. I also shared the concern of Steve that this play supports the building of "Boris the character" rather than "Boris the politician" - while it acknowledged that he simply lied during his time as a Telegraph columnist there was little sense of what his politics actually are or were.

I also had an issue with aspects of the writing. There is a running joke in Act Two about Johnson which says that This is a great line, gets a great response from the audience, so good that it's repeated three times, unfortunately it's not original and was quoted about another MP as far back as the late 90s. To reuse it, decades later, about another politician, felt like me to be indicative of the lazy writing and characterisation.

Some good stuff in this - particularly the performances - and I laughed a lot, particularly before the interval - but ultimately I didn't think it added up to much.