Harry Hill is a comedian familiar from television so one knew pretty well what to expect when he launched his rock musical Tony last week at the Park theatre in north London. It was quite a celebrity occasion and the audience enjoyed it immensely as – to amusing lyrics set to music sounding like things from Sullivan to Sondheim – we were taken on a rollercoaster ride through the career of Tony Blair. But for all the five and four star reviews, and the skill of the cast – stand up comedian Charlie Baker delivered a dazzling performance as Tony given that he looks nothing like the man – as political satire it was very predictable and anything but harsh.

Over it all hung the feeling that one was watching the flogging of a dead horse. Political satire needs to be about people with power and the cast list of characters was an endless parade of yesterday's men and women, some of whom one had quite forgotten – who remembers Clare Short for a start? – and others bogeymen no longer around like Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, the latter having been replaced by Vladimir. Were Blair an elder stateman figure for the Labour Party, which some past leaders managed, then there would be some topicality in it all, but he is a spent political force, albeit a very rich one.

The actor as Gordon Brown caught his voice and that peculiarly puritan Scottish son of the manse style. Brown might still be able to claim, unlike Blair, elder statesman status. But John Prescott, like Short, has vanished into that bourne from which no-one returns: the House of Lords. Robin Cook is long forgotten, Peter Mandelson was always Mandy so camping him up is not exactly daring, while Alistair Campbell got off lightly for reasons that are easy enough to see. He is not someone to cross. He could fight back harder than they could if irked. As for the Americans presented as part of that special relationship, Bush apart, they had to come with an explanation as to who they were.

The show did, however, end on a high note with a poster parade of the great and not necessarily good of today with the cast singing The Whole World is Ruled by Assholes to a particularly jaunty tune. It deserves to top the charts – or at the very least join Always Look on the Bright Side of Life as a much loved song for all occasions. I might, were I intending to have a funeral, have both of them played as the coffin went wherever it and I were going.
 
Bill Russell



Private life is sustained by the feline lodger, functioning well as a reminder that I know my place, while at the same time amply rewarded by her Presence. There is a long-established relationship of mutual dependence and comforting routine. Reassuringly humdrum, most of the time.

Elsewhere, beyond the parapet of the wee swamp, public life functions in quite a different way, and none of it is to its credit.

Public life is diminished, reduced to frivolity and spectacle, and entirely devoid of glamour or grace. The daily diet of hard hat and high-viz merely enhances the grotesque performances on factory floor, building site or health centre. The choreographed episodes highlight – unintentionally, if only they realised! – the emptiness and the crassness not only of the protagonists but also of the supporting acts as they prance and preen, practising the tarnished dialogues, the stage directions, the props and sets which will guide them through today's photo-op and on to the next one. Forever rehearsing, playing, repeating.

Endgame? Fingers crossed.

Shelagh Gardiner



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