Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Sue Gray was catapulted from civil service obscurity when charged with investigating Downing Street parties during lockdown. Remember when politics went so fully through the looking glass that Boris Johnson would only be sure he’d been at a celebration if Sue Gray concluded he had?

We knew little of her then and know little of her now, even though she has a different highly influential job as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. So, based only on a highly selective reading of a Wikipedia page, Emma Sidi has created the Sue Gray she’d like to exist.

This Gray is the polar opposite of the real one: a gossipy Gap-clad Essex girl, ‘basic’ by her own definition, who’s going to dish the dirt as she charts her rise to the top of the ‘civvy servs’.  

It’s a lovely conceit to simply throw out any facts to invent an entire life and personality. Rather than a respected (possibly feared) consummate professional and soul of discretion we get a motormouth who procrastinates on the Partygate report, reacting to the pressure to publish like a teen being asked to finish her homework. Rather than being the power behind the throne, she is dizzy-eyed, heavily crushing on Keir ‘dripping in rizz’ Starmer.

The show sometimes feels like a sketch idea that’s out of hand, but that’s countered by heaps of plot, a supremely watchable performance and an inventive form of satire that strips away Whitehall’s trappings of state to reveal politics to be as full of petty rivalries and tittle-tattle as any other office.

There are even literal watercooler moments as Sidi silently invites select audience members to hydrate to break up the working day / hour in a typical Edinburgh hothouse.

Sidi’s well known as skilled comic performer by now and she inhabits her fully realised alter-ego thoroughly. She’s even concocted a contrived psychological reason to revive her party trick of speaking in a simplified version of Spanish, with a dash of English, Franglais-style.

There are a few mild political jokes, if that’s what you came for, such as asking: ‘Does anybody remember Rishi Sunak?’ as if the recent PM was a tube of Tangerine Spangles in a Peter Kay nostalgia routine. 

But that is not the point. Sidi would not have had to rip up her script when the snap election was called as this is essentially a nonsense fantasy, featuring anything from a longstanding rivalry with former Metropolitan Police chief Cressida Dick (a very pleasing comedy name itself) to Marvel-based porn. If anything, there’s too much going on, especially in the abrupt and weird way the hour resolves.

But oversharing is on-brand our garrulous host’s penchant for no-filter gossip and this Sue Gray makes working in No10 seem like fun – no suitcase full of booze required.

Review date: 8 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard