Opening their first West End run in the week of the Labour conference, Messrs Bremner, Bird and Fortune were never likely to be short of new material. Rory Bremner kicks off as Blair, delivering a speech that oozes condescension: "You voted for me. So if you think about it, you're laughing at yourselves."
Like the whole evening, the speech is always droll and sometimes very funny. But there is something about Bremner's own stage persona that resembles the PM too closely for comfort. Both are slick bordering on untrustworthy, both are efficient but unexciting, and neither seems to believe very keenly in anything.
Apart, in Blair's case, from war - which inspires the evening's wickedest one-liners. Blair on Saddam's supposed weapons of mass destruction: "Unless we attack him, there's a chance he might not use them, and then we'll never know if he's got them or not." Bremner on Bush: "His popularity is so high, if they held the election now he might actually win it."
The show's intelligence is refreshing. Bremner and cohorts assume their audience is interested in politics, albeit mainly of the Washington and Westminster varieties. The finest of several set pieces sees Blair fed an American autocue script at conference, and forced to improvise a translation. Although sometimes no translation is necessary: "Ours is a country so vast that to cross it coast to coast would take five days," for example.
The problems with the show's politics is that they tend cosily to confirm the prejudices of Bremner's urbane audience. It's not only Johns Bird and Fortune that hark back to the era of 1960s satire. So too does the tone of self-satisfied detachment. Everything is well observed and needs to be said, but nothing is very surprising, passionate or abrasive.
We seek refuge in Bremner's impersonations, which (on stage at least) afford a pleasure that his satire alone can't deliver. At his best, as when he distils the vocal mannerisms of a Robin Cook or a Rolf Harris into meaningless (but always recognisable) sequences of gasps, gurgles and squeaks, we are watching a craftsman at work. It doesn't matter if the material is patchy; the voices alone are as dazzling as a magician pulling countless rabbits from his top hat.
· Until November 2. Box office: 020-7369 1740.
