Dominic Cavendish — Theater Critic

In a bold (some might say credulity-testing) move, Corden, 45, plays Alec an ex-serviceman who experienced traumatic tours of duty in Afghanistan. First seen installing security equipment in the constituency office of a Leftish opposition MP called Monica (Anna Maxwell Martin), he’s initially an innocuous gobby geezer (Corden on terra cognita). It turns out the pair went to the same school and grew up on the same street. “I’m always here if you need me,” she kindly offers, when it emerges he’s having domestic battles; Alec is distressed by his current divorce and separation from his children. That’s the basic compact of a good MP, isn’t it? But it becomes apparent that Monica may be intensifying his frustrations. Alec’s faith in his assumed ally to address his grievances (and even advance ideas about legislation to redress systemic bias, as he sees it, against men) is bound to meet a reality-check.

As a domineering, intemperate patriarch who has tightly controlled the purse-strings, the parallels with Succession are plain but the points of divergence are clear. Tyrone is a warmer character, aware of his fallibility; and whereas on screen Cox’s forte was forbidding impassivity, this verbose, confined epic calls for vocal clout and physical heft.

Moving the show to the West End might conceivably look like a commercially risky step too far, but there’s something about the defiant boldness of that assault on theatreland together with the apt concrete aesthetic of the Gillian Lynne that makes the show seem at home on its own terms.

The polite-ish audience participation doesn’t fully mesh with the dramatic need for a gathering witch-hunt, however, and Stockmann’s up-to-speed analysis also doesn’t quite align with Ostermeier’s barely technological depiction of this backwater. He cleaves to Ibsen’s template of whistleblowing via local-press publication, missing a trick when it comes to incorporating the demented online realm and social media.

Though it’s a commendably female-dominated evening (Ruby and Gloria’s husbands are derisory, ancillary figures), a shaming light is shone on predatory and presumptuous male behaviour in both eras. There may be some debate about the MeToo aspect of the storyline, which broaches female complicity in abuse; it’s a bold move for a man to tackle this subject. Of more pressing, prosaic concern for me was that the evening, running to almost three hours, just needs a trim and a less languid pace.

It will surely divide opinion and Jeremy Herrin’s production also invites complaints of over-statement – there’s a slight strain to some moments, now the play is set before a larger crowd. And yet, aside from a denouement that achieves that rare thing, shock-value, the evening offers the unmistakable pleasure that an actor of Harrelson’s stature has bothered to come over, and throw himself into a gleeful portrait of a visiting Yank as the grisly epitome of preening, mansplaining insufferability.

Their camaraderie may not have oiled the most crucial wheels of monarchy – as we cut between 1979 and 1952, when Tallon first arrived in the household as a callow youth, it’s made clear that the former Queen Consort is in constant danger of feeling like a spare part. But the energy lavished on enlivening the royal carry-on, against a backdrop of fiscal constraint and revolutionary winds of change, indicates the challenge of perpetuating the institution tout court.

Directed by Trevor Nunn, and choreographed by the great Gillian Lynne, this Cats remains an evening of fluff and nonsense, really, with leg-warmers and cutesy costumes that should be risible to a cynic's eyes. Yet such is the innate confidence and innocent zest of this bizarre, feline spectacle that all cynicism just moults away.