His comic genius is the highlight of this slick and vital drama
. In the intervening time he has moved to the States and become an award-winning chat show host, but now he’s back and doing what he does so splendidly, displaying that impeccable comic timing in both word and gesture. He’s paired here with another supreme comic actor, Anna Maxwell Martin, celebrated as
Yet Joe Penhall’s new drama delights in wrongfooting us, in subverting the expectations he so carefully crafts. When we first encounter Alec , he is in full-on Smithy-schtick, channelling. He is fitting the new security system in the office of backbench opposition MP Monica and when Alec reminds Monica that they went to primary school together, it is all jovial recollections, even though we can see Monica quietly twitching to be rid of him in order to get on with her already overloaded day.
The shifts in tempo come thick and fast; just when it seems that we have left comedy far behind, the evening’s third character arrives. This is Mellor , a parliamentary personal protection officer so useless that he presents Monica with a stab vest with a hole in it and a suggestion that she enrol for ju-jitsu classes.
In these dying days of a miserable election campaign, this dramatic spotlight on the safety – not to mention purpose, as well as limits – of our elected representatives is highly felicitous. Yet my lasting impression from
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