Rosanna Greenstreet reviews The Duck House at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, showing until Nov 2
The Duck House, eponymous symbol of the MPs expenses scandal which tore through the UK’s political establishment in 2009, has come out of the pond and onto the stage in a new play starring Ben Miller. After years of success in television, Have I Got News for You writer Colin Swash and Dan Patterson, who created Mock The Week, have turned their hands to writing for the theatre and the result is a funny, fast-paced and very topical show.
Ben Miller, who came to fame as one half of the comedy duo Armstrong and Miller, plays Robert Houston, a Labour backbencher in Gordon Brown’s government who is about to defect to the Conservatives just as news of the receipt debacle breaks. Miller is brilliant as the MP who has it all – and has claimed for most of it. We watch with delight as his shameless greed is exposed and he tries to hide it from Tory grandee Sir Norman Cavendish, who is played with huge aplomb by Simon Shepherd. Houston’s wife, son and Russian maid are dragged into the cover-up too, with hilarious results.
The comic possibilities of the exposure of scams by which the taxpayer unwittingly pays for the purchase of a massage chair, the cleaning of a moat, and the installation of a little house for your ducks, are endless. However the playwrights don’t stop there, commenting on current news events as the characters anticipate the coalition and future scandals such as phone-hacking and ‘plebgate’.
The director of The Duck House, Terry Johnson, has an impeccable comedy pedigree. His many awards include an Olivier for his own farce Hysteria. In The Duck House, Johnson sits the contemporary themes within the traditional structure of a British farce and, as the play opened in Guildford, theatre-goers laughed their approval throughout. Subsequent venues - Malvern, Nottingham and Cambridge - have been carefully picked for audience demographic, and it will be interesting to see how the play is received when it moves to London where more tourists, who may not understand all the political nuances, are likely to be buying tickets.
As the play transfers to the Vaudeville Theatre in the West End at the end of this month, Swash and Patterson will, no doubt, be honing and adding to their script. And, as David Cameron’s horse-riding chum Rebekah Brooks finally enters the dock alongside his former communications director Andy Coulson to face prosecution for crimes associated with phone hacking, they are unlikely to be short of material!
The Duck House is on at the Yvonne Arnaud, Guildford, until Nov 2. Visit yvonne-arnaud.co.uk. Transfers to the Vaudeville Theatre, London, on Nov 27. Visit vaudeville-theatre.co.uk.