As well as sit-down interviews with political heavyweights including Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and current and former Labor leaders such as Gordon Brown, Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Jeremy Corbyn, politics in the satirical arena will be big. “There’s a real appetite right now for politics everywhere,” said standup, journalist and former Labor councilor Ayesha Hazarika, who had to leave writing the start of her show until the last minute because of the fast pace of political events. “We’re just living in this era of a very hyperactive emotional roller coaster of politics and it’s getting crazier,” said Hazarika, whose show, State of the Nation – Power, Politics and Tractors, opens at the Gilded Balloon on Monday, August 8 . Only in the past few days has he walked away from writing off Rishi Sunak as Tory leader, only to improve in the Sky debate on Thursday and fail the following morning with his comments about redirecting capital from deprived urban areas to wealthy areas such as Tunbridge Wells. . “You’re like, ‘Okay man, please stop now because I have a show to write,’” he said. Boris Johnson will no doubt feature heavily in all the political standup setups – which include the fringe debut of Sarah Southern, David Cameron’s former aide and Matt Ford – but he has also inspired several entire plays. Boris the Third, in the Pleasance Courtyard, imagines an 18-year-old Johnson, unprepared, playing Richard III. The comedy, written and directed by Adam Meggido, stars Harry Kershaw as Johnson. Meanwhile, at the Pleasance Dome, Nadine Dorries Productions present the one-woman show My Dad and Other Lies by ‘Charlotte Johnson’, who describes herself as ‘Boris Johnson’s illegitimate daughter’. Improvised show Boris Live at Five, in the Gilded Balloon at the Museum, invites the public to ask the Prime Minister “whatever you want”. Comedy website Chortle recently said Johnson is playing a big part in this year’s multi-show festival “trying to make sense of the show that has been Westminster politics lately”. “He’s a comic figure, a tragic figure as well, and all those things are great for comedy,” said Chortle editor Steve Bennett, adding that Johnson is “a product of our times.” “The legendary story of his rise and fall. What made him popular is what brought him down.” Like society, there’s a lot of anger in comedy right now, Bennett said. “Anger-fueled comedy, anger-fueled satire and the tragic of Boris himself are probably the driving things.” Southern, whose show Scandalous! opens at the Voodoo Rooms on Saturday, promises to take audiences behind the scenes at Westminster. Amid Partygate, Beergate, resignations and former health secretary Matt Hancock’s affair, he said: “I don’t think there’s a better time to write a show about scandal. They are the things that have brought us together as a nation post-Covid.” Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST He added: “One thing Boris has provided, there is a lot of content for us.” Combining political influences from both sides of the Atlantic, in Boorish Trumpson in the Assembly Rooms, Claire Parry promises to ‘#MakeMusicGreatAgain’ with an ‘interactive, musical and clown-filled interrogation of power and those who wield it’. Other politically themed productions include Bloody Difficult Women, a comedy play by columnist Tim Walker about Gina Miller’s court case against Theresa May’s government. Michael Spicer’s room next door. Extinction Rebellion activist Kate Smurthwaite’s Humanity’s Last Hope? and AfroPolitiCool model Eunice Olumide. “It’s a fantastic time for political comedy,” said Forde, whose show Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right, runs on Pleasance Beyond all month and will be interviewed by Gordon Brown on Sunday. The appetite for political comedy grows every year, he said. But as British politics become “increasingly chaotic”, it is on a dangerous course, he warned. “Unfortunately, I think things will continue to get worse. The upside of this is that it gives me plenty of material to write about.”
