Yes, Prime Minister is the hilarious, critically acclaimed and painfully contemporary political play based on the cult 80s BBC series of the same name, renowned for spearing the ineptitude, smokescreening and bluster of our country’s decision-makers with wit and a good sprinkling of farce. For those who like their satire acerbic, their one-liners side-splitting and their references modern, Yes, Prime Minister offers a tale of blundering MPs, bureaucratic civil servants and bad advisors, caught up in their own web of double-speak and unscrupulous deception.

This stage version of the TV sitcom brings back the characters of PM Jim Hacker and his permanent secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby and places them firmly in the 21st century world of coalition governments, Blackberry-enslavery and 24-hour media surveillance. Set in Chequers, Hacker is faced with the task of rescuing his country from the brink of economic crisis under the eyes of a split cabinet and watchful news broadcasters, but the only salvation seems to be in the form of a morally questionable deal with the foreign secretary of an oil-rich Asian state…

Fresh from an overwhelmingly successful tour around the UK, Yes, Prime Minister is once again taking up residence in London’s West End, moving back to the Gielgud Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue after a run at the Apollo. The play’s last London run at the Gielgud Theatre was a recession-defeating triumph, selling out all its shows and taking just under £4million across its stay, with the move to the Apollo proving equally as successful. In addition to the sparkling reviews from esteemed theatre critics, the play also won the Whatsonstage.com award for Best New Comedy during its last appearance, and is written by the original sitcom writers Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn.

Cast Information

Simon Williams and the Olivier-nominated Richard McCabe will be reprising their roles from the UK tour as Sir Humphrey Appleby and PM Jim Hacker respectively. The role of Bernard Woolley, the Principal Private Secretary, will be played by Chris Larkin, and Charlotte Lucas will join him as the Special Policy Advisor Claire Sutton. Kevork Malikyan is the Kumranistan Ambassador, Jonathan Coote will become Jeremy Burnham, the Director-General of the BBC, and Michael Fenton Stevens will portray the BBC presenter Simon Chester.

Show Length and Times

Performances of Yes, Prime Minister last for approximately 2 hours and 20 minutes. Evening performances begin at 7.30pm and show from Monday to Saturday. Matinees are at 2.30pm on Wednesdays and Saturdays. There are no performances on Sundays.

Tickets for this quick-witted production of Yes, Prime Minister at the Gielgud Theatre London are now available for booking between until 19th November 2011 following two successful West End runs and highly successful nationwide tour. The show repeats every evening at 7.30pm from Monday to Saturday, with additional matinee performances running at 2.30pm on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and there is wheelchair access to the theatre.

Ticket Prices and Special Offers

CheapTheatreTickets.com provides an excellent range of pricing options and special offers to suit your different price and seating preferences. Tickets for the evening perfomances range in price depending on how close you want to sit to the stage; nonetheless, tickets for great seats in the stalls and dress circle are currently on sale at the special reduced prices of £39.50 and £45.99, subject to availability and the night you want to see the show.

For those who love a bargain, tickets in the balcony can be bought for as little as £31.50 on most evenings, and if you can make it to the performance on Wednesday afternoons it is possible to book fantastic seats in the dress circle for £24.50, at 50% off the normal price of £49.50!

Alternatively, if you are after a special Saturday night out and want the best seats in the house tickets are available at a reasonable £62.00 per person.

For groups of more than 8 people, special rates are normally available from Monday until Thursday for those aged 15 and over, so make sure to gather all your friends for a great way to share the laughs generated in this brilliant satirical play and save money at the same time!

Whatever day you want to catch Yes, Prime Minister, reduced rates are available for most performances in the limited 10-week run - just search for the dates you want using the search box in the top left hand corner of the page and enjoy the show!

“The whole point of this buoyant farce, with its references to everything from politicians’ fear of the Daily Mail to the tacky commercialism of the BBC, is that it locates its madness in a world we all recognise.”
Michael Billington at the Guardian

“This is not a spin-off or dramatisation of a TV series but a new and very funny contemporary play.”
David Munroe at indieLONDON

“A telling satire on the unscrupulousness of government, this updated stage version of the TV sitcom reduces its audience to helpless hilarity.”
Charles Spencer at the Telegraph

“The audience loved it. Aphorisms abounded. There were even a couple of topical references to coalition government.”
Quentin Letts at the Daily Mail

“A delightful stream of one-liners…David Cameron and Ed Miliband should treat themselves to an instructive night out.”
Fiona Mountfort at the London Evening Standard

Reality is stranger than fiction in this satirical swipe at modern government.

It could be argued that to witness the weirdness and hilarity of modern politics for yourself, all one needs to do at present is switch on the television for a fresh dose of uncomfortable insanity. Unfortunately for new political satire Yes, Prime Minister, this stage adaptation of the 1980s BBC series faces being somewhat overshadowed by the current brain-melting escapades of Britain’s judicial, political and business elite, making the tempestuous tête-à-tête of the beautifully realised Chequers study seem a touch quaint and outmoded; indeed, PM Jim Hacker could do with a custard pie in the face to add some spice to the entire affair.

Transformed for the West End stage by the original writers of the TV production, Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, Yes, Prime Minister is a eternal tale of the bluster, deception and morally murky double dealings at the top of the country’s political tree. Prime Minister Jim Hacker and his not-so-trusty sidekick Sir Humphrey Appleby are back to tackle the economic crisis, but appear to be floundering in a coalition government rife with disagreements and under the watchful eye of a meddling broadcasting corporation. So far, so familiar – however, the action is kicked up a gear with the arrival of the Foreign Secretary of fictional Kumranistan, who offers an oil pipeline through Europe that will solve the UK’s debt and prove a PR coup for Hacker in the process. Sadly for the PM and his team of advisers and false friends, this foreign envoy demands the services of an underage girl before he will follow through with the debt-busting deal. What follows is a sleepless night in the study of the Prime Minister’s country retreat during which the characters try to twist and turn their way out of their moral obligations in order to serve their own interests, allegedly in the name of patriotism.

There are certainly some high points to this very English play, most of which derive from the solid performances of its main leads. As Hacker Richard McCabe competently shows a man unravelling under extreme pressure, culminating in his childlike and believable escape under a desk when the situation and panic threaten to overwhelm him completely. His ineffectual but somehow likeable Prime Minister manages to win a modicum of pity, his face frozen into a grimace of indecision that is a joy to watch transforming into pained relief as the plot progresses. Chris Larkin turns in an oafish performance as Principal Private Secretary Bernard Woolley that drills home the point about employing classicists and Eton-groomed academics in positions of power, and the masculine stride of Charlotte Lucas as Policy Adviser Claire Sutton is a pitch-perfect portrait of an empathy-free Iron Lady in the corridors of power. Perhaps the most enjoyable portrayal comes at the hands of Simon Williams, who exudes public school pomp with aplomb as silver-tongued civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby, his lines oozing out like honey with a hidden basilisk bite that got some of the biggest laughs of the night. Appleby exemplifies the frustrating Whitehall habit of doublespeak in a way that would make Miliband and co proud, with some truly impressive and hilarious reeling off of euphemisms that layered the point beyond recognition. The central relationship between Appleby and Hacker of assisting, manipulating, blocking and controlling was another clever method of showing the fraught relationship between top civil servants and cabinet members.

Like its tricky characters, Yes, Prime Minister contains flaws that prevent it from being a truly side-splitting account of government life. The production suffers from the perennial problem of the political play in that you can often feel the punchline coming before it arrives, and some of the stereotypes and send-ups are a tad uncreative and potentially distasteful, even allowing for the mocking structure of satire. The core dilemma is a nasty cliché and a bit uncomfortable, with the ‘Eurojob’ proposition perhaps not the best way to get across some of the play’s finer points, especially in the contentious portrayal of a perverted Middle Eastern Foreign Secretary and his medallion-wearing ambassador. Nonetheless, whilst the play may not be a particularly original look at the political machinations of Britain’s top dogs this is not to say it is untrue, and the circularity of the plot demonstrates the unchanging nature of power at the top nicely. Yes, Prime Minister also effectively shows the difficulty of squaring moral grey areas with financial and political gain as well as exposing the hypocrisy of the UK’s island mentality, distributing dignity unexpectedly and leaving the Prime Minster with little of it at the conclusion. The antipathy between the BBC and the PM also feels right at a time when press and politics are colliding, and there are some clever moments including Woolley’s reciting of vacuous pre-set answers from a folder to a reporter and Hacker’s desperate resort to prayer when the going gets really tough.

There is certainly a place for politics in the West End and this attack on the divided loyalties and dubious morality of our leaders is a great place to start, particularly in the sheer recognition audiences will feel when confronted with caricatures such as Hacker and Appleby. Nevertheless, at times there is a lack of innovation and fresh perspective in Yes, Prime Minister that stop the play from realising its full potential, and despite the evidence of some hasty rewrites in lines such as “Quick, put that phone down! It could be hacked!” Jay and Lynn probably need to ratchet up the contemporising a notch to compete with the ever more true sentiment that reality can be stranger than fiction.

Olivia Squire

Have you seen Yes, Prime Minister in London? Did you love the show, or do you think that there are some things that need changing? Share your views in the comments box below!