I’m Sorry, Prime Minister Review – Hacker and Sir Humphrey return as confused but charming old programmers | stage

DDeath comes to all of us, but just before it, there also comes that period when no one is sure whether you still exist or not. “I’m not dead,” says Jim Hacker, played by Griff Rhys Jones, in the Yes Prime reboot. “I’m in the House of Lords!” The former Prime Minister is now also a professor at an Oxford university, but faces being fired from that job by students angry at his insults against the ultra-Orthodox faith. And so, in Jonathan Lane’s elegiac song for the beloved sitcom duo, Hacker calls on his old advisor Sir Humphrey to bail him out of trouble one last time.

Lane (who wrote the original with the late Anthony Jay) is also directing the production which premieres in 2023 at the Barn in Cirencester, alongside Michael Gyngell. Her ambition, as Sophie, a hacker care worker, quotes Shelley’s Ozymandias, is to check the strong once they have fallen. Where do Hacker and Sir Humphrey, now exiled from the corridors of power, cling to a world they now barely understand? The latter was condemned to a foster home by his daughter-in-law, the “Evil Queen.” There’s a poignancy in that, but it’s not touched upon in a show that specializes not in depth of emotion, or a far less dramatic incident, but in civilized wit and the illicit thrill of hearing old programmers say inappropriate things.

At its worst, it’s not so much a play as a way for Lean and his characters to talk, uninsightfully, about warnings and safe spaces. Stephanie Levy-John is enthusiastic as the ungrateful Sophie, forever righting the wrongs of her elders. Rhys Jones and Clive Francis as Sir Humphrey are also a treat, the former acerbic and arrogant, the latter a delicious mix of vulnerability and cunning – vulnerable enough to give the lift a chance, but with his skill intact to disrupt.

Their predicament here is low-stakes and not much happens, as they engage in back-and-forth dialogue maneuvers (“Humphrey, why were you so keen on austerity?”) but Lane’s perspective is riveting for its age and irrelevance and its effects on the settlement – ​​and the company of the characters is as charming as ever.