New satirical play from Rosie Holt

This is not about Rachel Reeves, we are assured, but an entirely different first-ever female Chancellor, who is shocked to find her office bathroom contains a urinal, and wants it gone.

However, like the current resident of No 11, she discovers it has a historical pedigree, having received the watery yellow discharge of none other than Winston Churchill. But unlike Reeves she gives  an ill-advised interview, letting rip with her full frustration about how the wartime leader has become an idealised totem for an unachievable idyllic Britain for the political right, worshipped by idiots.

Writer-performer Rosie Holt, who has built a big online following being a fictional Conservative backbencher, holds court from the start in the guise of this separate political character. Ignoring the fourth wall, it feels like stand-up as she drops ultra-topical references and rails against the manosphere and male feminists harbouring ill intent.

This is purportedly delivered at her unseen PA, Sophie, always on the other end of the phone. She fills in other plot points such as the divorce she’s embroiled in (which doesn’t seem all that important a storyline) and making a few easy jokes about how Liz Truss killed the Queen and the like.

No doubt imposed by budget constraints prohibiting a supporting cast, the phone conceit gets tired quickly, leading to several laboured one-sided pseudo-expositions like: ‘I’m A Celebrity… want me to do the next series, do they?’ and some longwinded and unfunny visual business with phone cords that isn’t a patch on Operation Mincemeat’s elaborate version of the gag. 

The Chancellor’s sacrilegious comments about Churchill result in her being besieged in No11, an angry mob at the gates. In her delirium, fuelled by the vodka she’s necking to cope, she starts hallucinating about the urinal, leading to some absurd visual imagery as it becomes inhabited by the spirit of Churchill himself (Michael Lambourne).

But any drama never really takes off – there’s panic but no purpose as Holt becomes increasingly frenetic and Keir Starmer pops up to suggest a very improbable way out of the dilemma. The show sits in an uncomfortable crossover between stand-up, polemic and farce and never quite picks a side. 

Holt has valid points to say about how the urinal makes her Chancellor feel like she’s in the wrong place, however worthy she is as a politician, and later gets into the darker territory of the online rape threats every woman in the public eye is forced to endure, including some mordantly grim jokes on the subject. And the overarching message about the creation of icons to fuel nationalistic myths is clearly very timely.

Yet even with additional material by Stewart Lee, the script is far from being as piercingly funny as it needs to be, beyond raising knowing laughs from political wonks lapping up mention of real-world figures like Isabel Oakeshott. And it all culminates in a passionately delivered but platitudinous speech that tries very directly to nail all the points, but seems lightweight. 

The real-world toilet story is a fine premise, and the haunted urinal a pleasingly absurd image. But after 70 minutes, you may be left with the nagging feeling: couldn’t this just have been a sketch? 

• Churchill’s Urinal is on at the King’s Head Theatre, London, until June 6 then transfers to the Edinburgh Fringe, playing Pleasance at EICC from August 13 to 23.

Review date: 20 May 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Kings Head Theatre