“This political comedy is unfortunately frenetic without focus.”
I knew something was suspicious when the girls behind me found literally every line hilarious. This show, Londongrad, had all the subtlety of a brick to the head. Ostensibly, the plot revolves around new Prime Minister Kiera Palmer (played by Cassia Crimin) as she receives word that Vladimir Putin is threatening to buy London or he will expose the birthday exploits of her Foreign Secretary Will (played by Cameron Wight). For some reason her husband is the editor of The Daily Mail. Secretly pulling the strings in some sort of Geordie Scarlet Pimpernel role is her Director of Communications Leela (played by Mollie Kerrigan).
Unfortunately the jokes were so uninspired I couldn’t help but long for the sweet release of that brick. The play is simply too long and ironically uninformed. I wanted a biting satire about political commentary through a London lens and what I got was an hour of shouty cheap shots about Tony Blair getting fellated by a guy in a bad wig. Kerrigan is the strongest of the trio, with her character Leela at least demonstrating a modicum of nuance and intrigue (great makeup, too). However she is caught between the one-dimension of her boss Kiera, who appears to exist solely to be the butt of of sexist pot shots and the pun in her name, and the utterly vile Will who appears to be some abominable drunk civil servant sex pest amalgamation.
This show could have been sensational as a ten minute Youtube Short, or even longer if it wanted to discuss the actual problems London politics faces at the hands of Russian oligarchs (no discussion of all the frozen assets taking up chunks of Chelsea, then?) Instead we get absurd farce as if it was written by someone whose only exposure to politics is from TikTok reels. The use of the world leader group WhatsApp chat for example, it being a misogynist cesspit could have been interesting but it trivialized atrocities. The constant whataboutism to make light of actual dictators for the sake of boy’s “banter” commentary was again a letdown. The jokes weren’t clever, just puerile.
The show ends inexplicably with a rap about Londongrad after a coup in which the southern half of London does in fact get sold to Putin. The trio perform the rap onstage in front of a music video projection of the same song. There is no closure to the characters and we do not know what, if any, repercussions the characters face for their awful decision making and backstabbing policies. The show is all punch-line and no set up; frenetic without focus.
Londongrad could have been The Thick of It for the modern theatrical era. We know from TV shows like It’s Always Sunny In Philaedphia that we don’t even need to like any of the characters to enjoy the humour. For me it needs more actual politics instead of relying on social media sound bites for important historical context: ha ha Epstein is a paedophile. Ha ha politicians are addicted to cocaine and alcohol. Ha ha Big Media runs the world. And? There is much potential if the script was just allowed to breathe and the characters given more depth than a puddle. Crimin’s Prime Minister allows her to demonstrate excellent facial expressions but where is her ministerial gusto and vigour? Wight’s laddish lackey shows clear wanton abandon but where is his pathos or vulnerability? Maybe it’s just me- everyone else was laughing. Maybe I’m reading too much into it and it’s just meant to be one hour of dick jokes.