Iannucci pens Boris Johnson/COVID satire

[extraordinary walnuts]

Opens Dec 1 at the Soho Theatre:

https://variety.com/2023/legit/global/veep-armando-iannucci-covid-19-boris-johnson-1235688496/

[idunnosomename]

fuckin ell

[DrGreggles]

[Rodan]

This will herald the rebirth of satire.

[Cold Meat Platter]

Hopefully this will be the thing that finally brings down Boris Johnson.

[BlodwynPig]

A sideways look at the tenure

[Small Man Big Horse]

Tickets for this are selling really fast, I got one for the 2nd of December a second ago and there were only two tickets available for that night. https://sohotheatre.com/events/pandemonium/

[Proactive]

At the end Armando comes on and says "At least it wasn't Jeremy Corbyns though" to absolute gales of laughter. "He's right as well" say the audience members to each other, wiping away tears of pure mirth at the mere thought. "If only we'd had sensible grown ups in charge like Rory Stewart and Sir Kier Starmer"

"Ooh yes!" says Armando. "You know Sir Kier is brilliant because he's a Knight of the Realm, like I aspire to be!"

[Pink Gregory]

bit fucking late isn't it

[Small Man Big Horse]

At the end Armando comes on and says "At least it wasn't Jeremy Corbyns though" to absolute gales of laughter. "He's right as well" say the audience members to each other, wiping away tears of pure mirth at the mere thought. "If only we'd had sensible grown ups in charge like Rory Stewart and Sir Kier Starmer"

"Ooh yes!" says Armando. "You know Sir Kier is brilliant because he's a Knight of the Realm, like I aspire to be!"

bit fucking late isn't it

When I saw the opening post I was quite excited by the idea and got tickets within a couple of minutes, but now I think more about it I wasn't much of a fan of Avenue 5, haven't seen David Copperfield due to the mixed reviews, and thought The Death Of Stalin was good but not great (albeit with some fantastic performances elevating the material) and his disdain for Corbyn really fucked me off. So now while I'm not regretting buying a ticket (it was only £20 as it's for the first Saturday night) my expectations are suddenly fairly low!

[Proactive]

When I saw the opening post I was quite excited by the idea, and got tickets within a couple of minutes later, but now I think more about it I wasn't much of a fan of Avenue 5, haven't seen David Copperfield and thought The Death Of Stalin was good but not great (albeit with some fantastic performances elevating the material) and his disdain for Corbyn really fucked me off. So now while I'm not regretting buying a ticket (it was only £20 as it's for the first Saturday night) my expectations are suddenly fairly low!

Don't let us miserable cunts spoil it for you mate, I'm sure it'll be just fine.

[The Mollusk]

Legitimately don't understand how anyone thinks they can satirise something as farcical as this event. I think I'm fairly justified in being cynical as fuck about this, and I also think, considering this was only 3 years ago and the actions of this fucking cunt needlessly cost thousands of lives, that having a right old chuckle about it is misjudged to say the least.

[centristmelt]

Just like In the Loop coming out 6 years after the invasion of Iraq. Finger on the pulse as ever.

[idunnosomename]

i mean to be fair you couldn't stage this at the time. also it's an adaption of his Paradise Lost parody published in 2021

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pandemonium-Some-verses-Current-Predicament/dp/1408715082

absolutely embarrassing though. your dad does blank verse about the pandemic.

he started a DPhil about Milton at Oxford and seems to have had a bee in his bonnet about trying to crowbar him into his career ever since. get over it Armando, he's not gonna shag you

[Milo]

I'm not sure what can be satirised about it. It's a period of mismanagement to the point of being mass gross negligence manslaughter combined with mind boggling amounts of corruption and profiteering by people who viewed themselves as so untouchable they held constant pissups while telling everyone else they weren't allowed decent funerals.

Satire? A satire of that?

[idunnosomename]

i think you could satirise it. The governmental control by scaremongering after dropping the ball on the initial lockdown before St Patrick's Day, absolute authoritarianism to the point where people were fucking dying or child abuse was happening you couldn't just go in someone's house to sort it out because oh no zombie plague. then Eat Out To Help out that actually made things worse and made a even bigger second peak of deaths after Christmas despite the government desperately trying to force people back to the office beforehand via the newspapers. Not to mention an old cunt being forced to walk round his massive garden for no particular reason by his management consultancy daughter and son-in-law and getting knighted by the queen before being killed in Barbados.

but do it a bit more subtly and detached than just putting a classical epic poem sheen on it and everyone being like oh ho how Swiftian!

I mean it isn't though. Swift was able to escalate a concern for the poor into something so viscerally disgusting it made people pay attention to it. this is just ego-massaging bollocks. barely satire, just puffed-up chronicling.

[DJ Bob Hoskins]

This sharply-pointed, limited-run West End satire by Armando Iannucci OBE is going to send shockwaves through the corridors of power, mark my words.

[Cuellar]

Boris comes on at the end saying "And I really am so very truly sorry"

[pierre boo-lez]

Just like In the Loop coming out 6 years after the invasion of Iraq. Finger on the pulse as ever.

That's nothing, it took the lazy toad 64 years to get around to The Death of Stalin.

[falafel]

Legitimately don't understand how anyone thinks they can satirise something as farcical as this event.

I'm really fucking tired of the mantra since 2016 that 'everything's so bad it's beyond satire'. If it's so farcical then to write a decent satire all you need to do is write a really effective and angry play that depicts what actually happened. Are you saying that satire should be reserved for things that aren't that bad yet or that haven't had a light shone on them? If anything it's an easy target. I genuinely don't understand your case.

I think I'm fairly justified in being cynical as fuck about this, and I also think, considering this was only 3 years ago and the actions of this fucking cunt needlessly cost thousands of lives, that having a right old chuckle about it is misjudged to say the least.

It's does seem like it is being sold as a bit of a laugh, but I have some faith. The Death of Stalin, for example, was a pretty brutal film in parts. I wouldn't say its purpose was to have a right old chuckle about soviet Russia.

Several in this thread seem to be saying that because he wasn't a fan of Corbyn he can be no more than a court jester, as if they are completely sure that if they met Jonathan Swift they would agree with him on all of the issues, great bunch of lads that he was.

Edit: to be fair, the below does seem a legitimate criticism of the poem (which I haven't read) but it's not Iannucci's usual format so even if it is the case, here's hoping the play itself benefits from the adaptation and a little further reflection.

Swift was able to escalate a concern for the poor into something so viscerally disgusting it made people pay attention to it. this is just ego-massaging bollocks. barely satire, just puffed-up chronicling.

[cakeinmilk]

Thanks for the heads up! Just got tickets for the 7th.

[shoulders]

Sometimes the mere idea of something produces such intense levels of revulsion across a range of emotions that enough offense has already been caused simply by its very suggestion.

Tedium, inanity, the most obvious target, the prospect of bringing to life something of no value long after the point it would have had any, possibly the worse crime of giving further fame to a person whose success was entirely dependent on engineering a fake persona and becoming a household name, all brought to life by someone who actively used their elevated status to attack the one meaningful alternative to Johnson anyway.

I think a satire about smug, up themselves centrist hypocrites and the fantasy bubbles they exist in could actually cause a stir. Nothing is more ripe for satire in this country than exploring the incestuous relationship between the media and politics.

This creation is more self-congratulatory, speaking to your own audience. It smacks of an unimaginative easy win.

[Pink Gregory]

I think the thing is that he satirises people, rather than systems.  He's obviously got a (correct) distate for Alaistair Campbell, but he doesn't think that the system that empowers people him should be reformed or abolished.  It was telling that he hosted a radio show called something like 'Alternative Parliament', in which, when imagining government in purely hypothetical, you-can-think-of-anything terms, he still imagines Parliament.

Do I find his satire toothless because I'm not a liberal myself?  Probably.  But his stuff is (largely) funny not because he's some silver-tongued god of satire but because he's a good, sometimes great comedy writer and director.

There's also the risk that, since Covid was a massive collective experience, all the possible jokes and observations have been made.  He's welcome to try, but I'm probably not the target audience.

[poodlefaker]

bit fucking late isn't it

Wait to you hear what Harry Hill's done to Tony Blair!!!

[Proactive]

I think a satire about smug, up themselves centrist hypocrites and the fantasy bubbles they exist in could actually cause a stir. Nothing is more ripe for satire in this country than exploring the incestuous relationship between the media and politics.

Now you're talking.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I'm really fucking tired of the mantra since 2016 that 'everything's so bad it's beyond satire'. If it's so farcical then to write a decent satire all you need to do is write a really effective and angry play that depicts what actually happened. Are you saying that satire should be reserved for things that aren't that bad yet or that haven't had a light shone on them? If anything it's an easy target. I genuinely don't understand your case.

I'm in complete agreement with you there, the amount of comedians who have said something similar to the "beyond satire" idea frustrates me as I think it absolutely can be. It's weird, I saw Bridget Christie's first post Brexit show and it's the only one of hers that I didn't love, and the general idea was "We've got to try and understand what happened, open a conversation with Brexit voters and not just attack them", whereas her next show (which wasn't really about Brexit but about her experiences trying to break in to tv and radio, and which was fucking superb) was much more vicious about those who had voted for it. And while I mention her as there was such a sharp contrast between the two shows, she was far from alone in doing that.

Wait to you hear what Harry Hill's done to Tony Blair!!!

Damnit man, I've had months of therapy and was almost over that, but now you've brought the horrifying memories back again!

[Milo]

I think my objection to the satire that's likely to be on offer here is that it'd be more like gentle joshing when it really calls for furious vitriol.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Don't let us miserable cunts spoil it for you mate, I'm sure it'll be just fine.

I mean I hope you're right, but I feel like I've suddenly realised that while I used to love Armando's work so much, the ending of The Thick Of It was the last time I really loved something he's done.

I think my objection to the satire that's likely to be on offer here is that it'd be more like gentle joshing when it really calls for furious vitriol.

That's the problem with TONY! The Tony Blair Rock Opera, there's only one bit which attacks Tony viciously towards the end, but the rest of the time he's portrayed as a naïve "Tim Nice But Dim" type, to the extent that I have no interest in anything Harry Hill does any more, and I used to love him to pieces. I know people have said his recent work in progress shows were amazing, a real return to form, but there's just been too much shit over the years, what with the album, the last couple of series of Tv Burp, those short black and white sketches and the incredibly lazy clip show Harry Hill's World of TV which was so bland that I find it upsetting that while so many comics and sketch groups don't get the chance to appear on tv, Hill is paid for something like that and puts in fuck all effort.

[king_tubby]

I'm glad his disgust at the British establishment has resulted in him giving back his Order of the British Empire.

[madhair60]

the thing is, you couldn't make it up. something like this, you cannot make it up. it would be impossible to make it up. don't even try, because you won't be able to make it up.