Theatre and Dance Reviews

It was a big ask.

It's always difficult when an unknown has to step into the shoes of a star, but when the star in question is absolutely synonymous with the role that the understudy now has to play, you would think that it was nigh on impossible.

But this is what happened to Mike Sherman. The legendary Rik Mayall has been ill for the past two weeks and so the man who has been playing one of the security guards in the current touring production of The New Statesman has stepped up to the challenge and has been playing the cult Alan B'Stard character ever since - including this week in Milton Keynes.

Now, no one else has ever played Alan B'Stard, it was written for Mayall, he created the character and because he is such a unique performer it makes it extremely difficult for anyone else to take it on.

Admiration

My admiration therefore goes to Sherman for doing just that, and to be fair he does a great job given the hard task he has been set. You can tell it's written for Mayall, some of the lines are clearly designed for him to do one of his trademark intonations or expressions and Sherman wisely doesn't go the whole hog in doing an impersonation - but nevertheless, it's still there, it has to be, it's the character that we all know and love and with Mayall not saying the lines, it's quite difficult to get past.

In the end I tried to forget that Rik Mayall had ever played the part and took it for what it was, a satire on the past ten years of New Labour government and as that, it works very well. In the hands of Sherman, B'Stard becomes more of a buffoon than a Machiavel - there is nothing wrong with this - it's just different!

Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran are of course top comedy writers and the script stands up brilliantly. There are scathing attacks on Scots, the BBC, Weapons of Mass Destruction and Cherie Blair, while Tony is trying to keep his name in the headlines with his "Legacy Committee"! The satire is vicious and no member of the government is exempt - even the fact that no one knows who half the new Cabinet are is brought up!

Same

But my one complaint was that if, like me, you saw last year's version, it's just the same story with a few topical updates. Basically, B'Stard has inadvertently lost the Weapons of Mass Destruction. Actually they're not lost but hidden in the vaults of the BBC who have built a new studio on top of them where they make the irritating  dancing introductions to their programmes. The show has definitely been changed in the past couple of weeks to reflect the UK's change of Prime Minister so in effect we were seeing some of the first satire about Gordon Brown's performance as PM - but I did wonder what was different about the show before he took over this role.

The thing is that with Mayall in the role you wouldn't care about this, you would just revel in seeing the master at work doing his thing because that's an event in itself - the show is a vehicle for him. But having seen it before I felt a bit cheated.

But Mike Sherman is a good actor and rises to the challenge well. The best bits for me were the new topical references because they were genuinely funny and he delivers the lines well and with good comic timing, but without Mayall and without a new story, it's generally not really very satisfying. But if you haven't seen the stage show before, go along and enjoy the satire and if you haven't ever seen the character before then you will probably love the whole thing!

There are probably all sorts of quips I could make about understudies coming into the limelight after years behind the scenes and liken Sherman's position to Gordon Brown's but I'm not even going to go there! Marks and Gran do it so much better!