Churchill’s Urinal

Churchill’s Urinal imagines a new female Chancellor trying to remove the urinal once used by Winston Churchill from her private bathroom, with the resulting political chaos turned into a satire of gender, masculinity and colonial politics in the style of Yes Minister. Rosie Holt plays the Chancellor, with Michael Lambourne appearing as Churchill himself.

It is frantic and disorganised. The comedy is very lukewarm, the response from the audience was equally lukewarm, and there were missing cues and missed lines that further knocked the production off balance. The whole thing becomes more of a rant than a tightly constructed political comedy, with the good central idea gradually getting lost amongst everything else.

There are some decent comic ideas buried in it, and the urinal itself is a wonderfully stupid premise for a political satire. But the production never seems to know quite how much of this material it wants to be farce, stand-up or political argument.

The most frustrating part is the venue itself. The production feels like an overall waste of a good theatre space: Too little control, too little shape, and not enough payoff for the premise.

Poor overall. There is a decent comic idea somewhere inside it, but I can't say the production found it.

Runs 13–18 August, 20 August and 22 August at 2pm; 21 August and 23 August at 8:30pm.