'The Cabinet Minister' review – this absolutely knockout revival of a Victorian farce is one of the funniest shows in town

Read our review of Arthur Wing Pinero's comedy The Cabinet Minister, adapted by Nancy Carroll, now in performances at the Menier Chocolate Factory to 16 November.

I confess I didn’t know much about the plays of Arthur Wing Pinero, but after seeing this absolutely knockout production of his 1890 farce The Cabinet Minister, brilliantly adapted by actress and debuting playwright Nancy Carroll, I’m now an ardent fan. This is, hands down, one of the funniest shows in London theatre right now.

Although the title suggests political satire, happily Westminster stays on the margins. Instead we focus more on the chaotic domestic life of said cabinet minister, Sir Julian Twombley – although we do learn that his career is on the skids because he’s accepted some dubious “favours”, which adds an amusingly topical edge to the tale.

His wife, Lady Katherine, is in trouble too. Once the humble daughter of a poor farmer, she has overcompensated in her bid to win over the nobility by becoming an alarming spendthrift. That habit has been inherited by her feckless son, Brooke, who is over £3,000 in debt, and she now fears that both Brooke and daughter Imogen’s prospects are ruined.

Thus a desperate Lady Katherine gets ensnared by an ambitious dressmaker, the marvellously named Fanny Lacklustre, and her moneylender brother, Bernard. The scheming pair use their leverage to gain entrance into high society.

Is there really a difference between Sir Julian’s dubious dealings and Bernard’s usury business other than class prejudice, queries Winero. He also illustrates the absurdities of Victorian social distinctions via Fanny, who is considered a lowly tradeswoman in the mornings, but a “lady” in the afternoons.

But this is primarily a total romp, jam-packed with witty one-liners, physical humour, sublime character comedy, and some very, very silly double entendre. The latter gets a boost from Paul Foster’s inspired choice to include music in his spry production: most of the talented cast also pick up an instrument, inviting suggestive gags about having a fiddle.

Carroll not only supplies this zippy update to Winero’s work, but also gives a fabulously charismatic performance as the mercurial Lady Katherine. She switches with lightning speed between vivacious charm, melodramatic horror (“I am soaked in duplicity!”), and shrewd calculation. Carroll brings the house down with her merciless rulings: of the gluttonous Bernard, she surmises “Is he making breakfast intolerable? Yes.”

Nicholas Rowe is wonderful too as Sir Julian, jaded by the political circus. He gets his butler to write his speeches, which are “superficially concerned with ‘vision’.” (Again: not much has changed.) Joe Edgar is a delight as the Bertie Wooster-ish Brooke, as is Romaya Weaver as his chirpily snobbish cousin Effie, and Laurence Ubong Williams as both the sage butler and brash Bernard.

Rosalind Ford and George Blagden balance ludicrousness and sweetness in the romance between Imogen and Valentine, which is complicated by the nomadic Val’s newfound class consciousness and rejection of civilised society. “I’ve come back…hopelessly wise,” he sighs, in one of the numerous pitch-perfect line readings that shades deliciously into camp.

Phoebe Fildes’s Fanny is a steely social-climber (albeit one with a Del Boy-esque penchant for cod French), Sara Crowe is magnificent as Julian’s meddling sister, who frequently professes a “motive”, and Dom Hodson brings wild-eyed intensity to nephew Keith. But the supreme scene-stealers are Dillie Keane (having almost indecent levels of fun) and Matthew Woodyatt as a doughty, overbearing Scottish matriarch and her tongue-tied son: they are absolute comic bliss.

Janet Bird’s gorgeous set and costumes match that heightened register, from Imogen’s feather-bedecked coming-out ensemble to the tartan drapes and mounted animal heads of the Scottish castle. This glorious renaissance of Winero’s work definitely gets my vote.

The Cabinet Minister is at the Menier Chocolate Factory to 16 November. Book The Cabinet Minister tickets on London Theatre.

Photo credit: The Cabinet Minister (Photos by Tristram Kenton)