Rosie Holt gained popularity through her skewering of the Conservative Party and her online Conservative MP persona. Yet, this new work from the comedian struggles to land in an oddly neutral, blunt-edged comedy.
It is an outlandish and expectantly goofy premise from the start. Celebrating her appointment as the first Female Chancellor of the Exchequer, Holt’s Chancellor soon finds herself at odds with an angry nation over her plans to remove a urinal from her office bathroom, replacing it with a high-tech AI toilet with the synthetic voice of John Nettles, because, it seems, it is a monument of national heritage given that it was the same urinal Winston Churchill once used. The national outrage over her actions is a not-so-subtle nod at contemporary social media hysteria. Still, the piece goes even further into the absurd when the urinal comes to life, channelling the spirit of Churchill and offering the embattled Chancellor political advice.
What stifles this production, though, is the lack of bite in its comedy, which is unlike Holt’s viral videos and might leave expectant fans feeling a little short-changed. Here, Peter Mandelson, Kemi Badenoch, Keir Starmer, Liz Truss, and Reform voters all become the punchline, but the gags lack bite and are surprisingly, and a little too obviously, safe. As a result, the piece, only reaching 70 minutes, meanders too much and struggles to make a genuine point where gags are sandwiched between references to the very real and horrific threats of violence that powerful women face online every day.
That said, there are some neat moments. The audience interactions work well, including an unfortunate scene for two front-rowers and a vomiting Chancellor, and the play makes inventive use of the tech box to mimic the baying mob drawing in. Holt, meanwhile, is effective as a Chancellor on the edge, while Michael Lambourne’s ghostly appearance as the urinal itself, channelling the gravely voice of Churchill, is initially quite fun, and something is amusing about the Jacob Marley-type design haunting the Chancellor during their first exchanges. It also works better when it leans into the absurdity more, with Holt getting tangled up in multiple phone cords, batting away aides, journalists and a dreadful ex-husband, while the infrequent but amusing interruptions from AI Nettles are gloriously daft.
It is also a production that suffers as a result of its attempts to be so timely. The Chancellor’s opening lines, a telephone call with a hapless Gen-Z advisor who is belittled for her anxiety and work-from-home status, try too hard to refer to real-life events that only happened in Parliament last week, which, as a result, feel like comedic routines that need refinement. Indeed, the Chancellor’s put-downs of anyone and everyone mean it is hard to place them politically, and one wonders whether the play would have had more success if it had leaned more firmly upon Holt’s excellent Conservative characterisation, rather than this unsure middle ground.
Churchill’s Urinal is a solid premise and has clear potential. The production, a combination of Holt and Stewart Lee’s writing, is evidently trying to deride the tribalism within politics, but, ironically, it needs to pick a side to make a better point.
This comedy is not a busted flush, but it could do with a bit of plunging.
