What happened when Prince William, David Cameron and David Beckham were holed up together in a Swiss hotel during England’s unsuccessful bid to host the 2018 World Cup? That is the question posed by William Gaminara in this funny and inventive farce: the only problem is that ongoing allegations about vote-rigging inside world football’s governing body, Fifa, make it a look a bit dated.
But the main joke rests on the interaction between three public figures as they prepare to put their case to the all-powerful voters. In Gaminara’s version, Prince William is an instinctive practical joker and David Beckham a guileless innocent in thrall to a wife angling for an invitation to the forthcoming royal wedding. But the sharpest portrait is of Cameron, who has all the gung-ho enthusiasm of one of nature’s PR men, until things start to go against him: once thwarted, either by the loss of Prince William’s trousers or the even more serious fiasco of England’s failed £20m bid, he turns into the blustering, brick-red figure familiar to all students of prime minister’s questions.
Dugald Bruce-Lockhart catches precisely Cameron’s tendency, when cornered, to turn into a bullying Flashman and wriggles convincingly when asked to distinguish between a bribe and an incentive. Séan Browne also offers an uncannily accurate impersonation of David Beckham, Tom Davey is an endearingly chumpish William and Ravi Aujla doubles neatly as a suspiciously obliging hotel attendant and his bungling twin. It is all directed with great pace by Philip Wilson and offers plenty of laughs: I just feel that, on this occasion, England’s failure cannot be attributed entirely to personality clashes or our own native incompetence.
• Until 2 May. Venue: St James theatre, London. Buy reduced-price tickets online at The Guardian Box Office, or call 0330 333 6906
