Surrey

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1500" height="844" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2024/04/Party-Games-cast.jpg" alt="The cast of Party Games which opens at Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford in spring 2024." class="wp-image-53112" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2024/04/Party-Games-cast.jpg 1500w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2024/04/Party-Games-cast-800x450.jpg 800w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2024/04/Party-Games-cast-1000x563.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2024/04/Party-Games-cast-400x225.jpg 400w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2024/04/Party-Games-cast-768x432.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" /></figure>



Party Games! is the newest in-house production by Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford coming to the stage in early May. Directed by the theatre&#8217;s chief executive Joanna Read and written by Michael McManus, who&#8217;s spent decades inside the UK&#8217;s inner political sphere, the story goes inside the chaos of government to see whether advisers do advise and if ministers can actually make decisions.



Billed as &#8220;hilariously acerbic&#8221; it stars Matthew Cottle as John Wagner, the newly elected leader of the hastily formed centrist One Nation Party, who is presiding over a hung parliament. Debra Stephenson is his deputy leader and Ryan Early is the spin doctor Seth Dickens.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-play-about-politics">A play about politics</h2>



Party Games! is written by Michael McManus, who been a political insider for decades. He worked in central office while Maggie T and John Major were in charge, has been a special adviser to several Tory ministers and headed up Ted Heath&#8217;s private office for five years. No doubt he has a few stories to tell&#8230;



Joanna Read: We&#8217;ve been working on this for probably three years. Michael wrote Maggie and Ted which we brought to the Yvonne Arnaud in 2021. So I commissioned him to write this. He&#8217;s a political writer, so that&#8217;s what he wants to write about &#8211; and he was interested in writing about spin doctors and also the business of leadership.



Tell us more&#8230;



JR: There are two main characters &#8211; the would-be Prime Minister [played by Matthew Cottle] and the spin doctor [Ryan Early]. And it&#8217;s about the kind of deal the Prime Minister has to make to get in bed with the spin doctor &#8211; the guy who&#8217;s going to secure him power. 



So, what drew you to this topic? You&#8217;ve worked with Michael before so that must be one reason &#8211; but why politics?



JR: I was drawn to this because Michael created two very charismatic characters &#8211; your spin doctor and the Prime Minister, and now they&#8217;ve been joined by other characters &#8211; so the play is broad and diverse in that sense. [Debra Stephenson joins the cast as the Deputy Prime Minister and Anne Waggner is the PM&#8217;s wife.]



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-political-appetite">Political appetite</h2>



How will it go over with Surrey audiences?



JR: I know that Guildford likes political comedies. They certainly like political pieces and intelligent work so it seemed a great fit. They loved Maggie and Ted and Dead Sheep when they were here. And The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson sold out. so there&#8217;s definitely an appetite for it &#8211; and I wanted to feed that appetite.



The Guildford audience seem very engaged &#8211; there&#8217;s been a lot of change [politically]. It&#8217;s been Tory, Lib-Dem, Tory, Independent, Tory. I mean it&#8217;s local politics, right. And people seem to have a view &#8211; in a good way. They&#8217;re positively engaged, and intelligent audiences so they&#8217;re naturally drawn to theatre that asks questions and allows them to be more than just a passive spectator.



Can we expect a few laughs?



JR: Michael&#8217;s writing is funny. And his dialogue is really good &#8211; it&#8217;s sharp and funny. As someone whose background is politics, it&#8217;s not something you&#8217;d necessarily put together &#8211; comedy and politics. But he&#8217;s lived a lot of the things he&#8217;s writing about in some capacity.



We&#8217;re heading into the future for this one, aren&#8217;t we? It&#8217;s set in 2026&#8230;



JR: Yes! And what&#8217;s been really interesting &#8211; and actually, kind of a bit frustrating &#8211; is that some of the things Michael put into the story have actually happened. But he wrote about them before they happened.



Comedy and politics &#8211; why do they go so well together?



JR: You wouldn&#8217;t expect them to be such good bedfellows necessarily, but you need pressure for good comedy, and high stakes. The business of power creates that. If it&#8217;s a farce, you generally need some sort of confusion &#8211; and the business of government can create confusion. Politics also has big characters and big personalities, and that lends itself well.



I guess with politics, there&#8217;s an element of &#8216;you couldn&#8217;t make it up&#8217;?



JR: Well, like I say, some of it has already come to fruition. Yes, so absolutely &#8211; there are absurdities there.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-politicians-and-spiders">Politicians&#8230; and spiders</h2>



What can we expect?



JR: It&#8217;s fast and funny. It&#8217;s also observed. Some crazy things happen &#8211; things you think can&#8217;t possibly be true &#8211; and that sort of isn&#8217;t true, but it&#8217;s very similar to what&#8217;s happened. It does get a bit ludicrous at times, in a good way. 



How close to the truth does the story skate?



JR: It&#8217;s not supposed to be real, but it should leave you asking questions and wondering. Michael&#8217;s got the inside knowledge, hasn&#8217;t he. So there&#8217;s a lot he knows that the rest of us are blissfully unaware of. For example [in Party Games!] we&#8217;ve got a Chief Whip who has a tarantula spider on his desk. And you&#8217;d think, we&#8217;ll that&#8217;s nuts, why is this guy carrying a spider around? But there was a Chief Whip who kept a pet tarantula on their desk. 



Looking back at fictional political characters &#8211; I don&#8217;t recall any with a pet spider. But tell us which ones you&#8217;ve loved.



JR: I grew up with Yes Minister and then Yes, Prime Minister. I love Sir Humphrey. I just loved all that wordplay. The guys who wrote that were terrific writers &#8211; the best example of clever funny. I also loved The Thick of It and all of the Armando&nbsp;Iannucci stuff &#8211; Veep and The Thick of It.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-on-tour">On tour</h2>



Party Games! is produced by the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, then goes on tour, right?



It&#8217;s part of our policy to produce our own work, and to contribute to the national touring circuit so that other theatres also get the benefit of the work we&#8217;re producing. After Guildford, we take the production to Windsor, Cardiff, Cambridge, Worthing, Bath and Malvern.



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<a href="https://www.yvonne-arnaud.co.uk/whats-on/party-games" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Party Games!</a> is at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre from Thur 2 &#8211; Sat 11 May. Tickets from £29. Concessions from £13. <a href="https://www.yvonne-arnaud.co.uk/whats-on/party-games" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Book tickets here.</a>



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Party Games! at Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford

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