Tuesday, May 01, 2007
  01/05/07 – ‘THE NEW STATESMAN’
Yesterday (Monday, 30th April, 2007) I watched the opening night of Rik Mayall’s revival of the Alan B’stard character at the New Theatre, Cardiff, it was fantastic I strongly advocate that you go and watch it, it’s touring so you don’t necessarily have to come to Cardiff.

There were a few opening night mishaps with a swivel of the filing cabinet revealing a secrete compartment, which wasn’t supposed to be revealed until after the intermission, within the first five minutes. The next mishap was when the minister at number 9 Downing Street, B’stard, tried to throw a piece of paper at his PPS (parliamentary private secretary – or parliamentary private slave as it was quipped later) and missed throwing it into the audience, then making the target retrieve the projectile for a second take, after Mayall had recovered from corpsing, rolling his arm like an American baseball pitcher, just to rescind the move in favour of launching the projectile from no more than 30 cm away from the PPS in comic fashion another bout of corpsing from an improvisation from the terrorist character. However, the most entertaining mishap came when there was a ‘power cut’ forcing B’stard to scramble for the candelabra which then took about two minutes to light all three candles. (doesn’t sound like much but it was longer than Mayall should have taken – which was accentuated when he proclaimed, “won’t these things light” with more expletives obviously) then as the wife-soon-to-be-ex-wife character came on set he over hammed the reaction, missed the surface which he was meant to put the candelabra and sent three lit candles onto the stage (luckily the fall put them out) then rolling off onto the floor, which were soon followed by Mayall launching himself after them, and muttering “this has got to be the most unluckiest place” and later when he was trying to relight the candles “Plaid Cymru”. It was a fantastic play and Mayall reactions to these little mishaps only enhanced this. The final mishap occurred when ‘Condoleezza Rice’ grabbed B’stard by the balls and began to twist and squeeze, Mayall broke character to exclaim that she’s got a hand full of pubes and then asked if he had broken the mood.

Although, the play wouldn’t have been so funny if the scenarios weren’t so plausible B’stard during this play is playing a continuation of his character from the 80s TV show of the same name, but is now a senior member of the New Labour cabinet quipping that he did not move to join new labour, new labour moved to join him. a point echoed by David Davies AM, MP (Monmouthshire) who said “based on their current political standpoints, the Tories and Labour were probably better suited to a coalition. [than another other parties in Wales]” the theme is that B’stard is determined to survive and prosper. Claiming all the changes made to New Labour all women short lists, for example, were his idea because he had slept with all the secretaries and tea-ladies, well the ones that hadn’t been flattened by John Prescott you understand. Then he manages to persuade Rice to invade Norway instead of Iran – because they have lots of oil and too few people to resist an invasion. Although, in an indication of the stereotypical American rice doesn’t realise that Norway is not a desert country and sends desert acclimatised troops of which a large segment dies from hypothermia before they even land. This is after he puts all his money in oil shares (insider trading) and manipulates his old labour PPS to call a strike on the north sea oil rigs the cumulative result of the actions pushes oil prices sufficiently high to ensure his membership of the esteemed trillionaires club (the secrete organisation that governs the world). It was also suggested by the character Rice, that America had no interest in securing oil reserves but only destabilizing oil producing regions – in order that oil companies (which funded Bush’s presidential campaign) can maximise profits. B’stard also managed to persuade Rice to bomb the BBC television centre after saying that he had hidden WMD (that he was trying to sell) in the empty basement where the BBC comedy department once was. It forces reminiscences of Bush’s comments that he wanted to bomb Al Jazerra (apologies for spelling) the Qatar based news agency.
These is a fantastic play, and a fantastically thought provoking piece, (if you choose it to be) it gives you a new interpretation on events, and reasoning behind the events, a fantastic play hosting a character which could still have a massive impact in more popular media than stage. I highly recommend it to you.
  7:17 PM
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