Pandemonium at Soho Theatre – review

In Milton’s Paradise Lost, Pandemonium is the place of all demons – which is precisely the sense, as well as its more modern meaning, that the arch-satirist Armando Iannucci uses it here.

This mock 17th-century entertainment – “A Scornful Account of the Activities of Mr Boris Johnson and Others during the Pandemic and its Aftermath” – attempts to use the scalpel of humour to hold the government to account for the horrors they perpetuated.

It’s sophisticated, clever, often very funny and full of genuinely cutting lines. Yet it barely scrapes the sides of the madness that is currently being unfolded at the Covid inquiry. For Johnson supporters, it might seem like a series of cheap shots; for Johnson loathers, it barely plumbs the depths of the anger they feel.

But if it is taken simply as a political pantomime, an alternative entertainment for the season, then it works very well. Sharply and swiftly directed by Patrick Marber on a stage bare except for a hexagonal platform and a backdrop depicting the Grim Reaper like a figure on a Puritan pamphlet (designs by Anisha Fields), it has a sure sense of its period style, shaped in five Latinate acts.

The excellent five-strong cast is led by Paul Chahidi who puts on a blond wig to become Orbis Rex, “world king, begetter of a thousand children”, leaning forward to share a little secret with the audience. “I am a god,” he whispers, showing us a vision of his heavenly birth. He’s assisted by a little elf called Riches Sooner – “a deep and ready well of gold” and Matt Hemlock, who emerges from an oozing pit of slime like a boneless lizard, ready to ingratiate himself with the “circle of friends”, Hooray Henrys with their “lager to nipple clutch.”

There’s terrifying Less Trust, in a ballgown, who collapses in a puddle when she is asked if she has costed anything, and the baffled scientific advisors such as Sir Patrick Balance – “We lock down now, or is your brain made of gravy?”

The whole thing is powered with a wild energy, and some excellent physical comedy. Chahidi doesn’t attempt to impersonate Johnson but he catches his mad narcissism as he heads off to fight the dragon of the pandemic – “Vermin Vamoosh” – pumped up with nothing more than his own self-worth. Around him Faye Castelow, Debra Gillett, Natasha Jayetileke and Amalia Vitale valiantly and superbly play many parts, with Vitale particularly memorable as the pathetic Hemlock and Jayetileke excellent as “mini man” Sooner.

They punctuate the satire with passages where Iannucci reflects on the sorrow and fury people felt as loved ones died, on the stoicism of the British people at a time when the government so failed them. It’s all beautifully done, but perhaps it really is true that we are living in a time beyond satire. This stage incarnation makes you smile, when the real world makes you want to weep.