Becoming BoJo: What it takes to play Boris Johnson on stage

Blond ambition: Will Barton as Boris Johnson
Michael Wharley

It was a dinner party with consequences. Boris Johnson and his then wife, Marina Wheeler, invited Michael Gove and his wife Sarah Vine to their house in Islington. Over slow-roasted shoulder of lamb they discussed the looming referendum on leaving the EU. That was February 16 2016 and Johnson, who turned out to be so pivotal in what happened next, had yet to decide his position.

When playwright Jonathan Maitland heard about the dinner he says “it felt like a play waiting to happen”, and The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson opens at the Park Theatre in Finsbury Park next month. In the play Johnson is visited by spirits of prime ministers past to help him make up his mind — Margaret Thatcher (played by Spitting Image’s Steve Nallon), Winston Churchill (Arabella Weir) and Tony Blair (Tim Wallers). It then flashes forward to 2029, when Boris is still at large and wants to make Britain great again.

Will Barton plays Johnson. “I’m trying to see things from Boris’s point of view,” he says, over a lager at the Park Theatre’s bar. “I think he would be great for an evening out. I wouldn’t want him as prime minister but if I’m playing him I have to sympathise with him.”

Barton actually looks more like David Cameron — he has already played him, in a comedy where he imagined the former prime minister had created Boris Johnson as his alter ego. The actor and Johnson both cycle but that is where the similarities end — Barton grew up in Hampstead, where he went to the local comp, and his politics are to the left of the Tory MP’s. He wishes David Miliband would come back and save the Labour Party.

But Barton has history with Boris. He has played him four times before — the first was on the night Johnson became London Mayor. “It was at Stratford East so I played him as thinking we were in Stratford-upon-Avon, quoting Shakespeare. Then I did a sketch where he was going to try to be the new Jonathan Ross — he tried to top Four Poofs and a Piano as the house band with Six Bisexual Muslims and a Cello.”

In 2017 he played him in TV drama-documentary Boris vs Theresa: How May Became PM. Jez Bond, who runs the Park Theatre, saw him in it and suggested him for this play.

So what is it about Johnson that appeals to Barton? “There are things I can relate to. He is chaotic and scruffy, as am I. He likes to sail close to the wind, which I do too. If someone has a strong point of view, either from the Left or the Right, I immediately see the other side. I like to challenge it, in a fun way.” This play doesn’t aim to change minds, and those involved are keenly aware of Brexit fatigue. Barton’s aim is for it to be a good night out. “I hope some will leave saying they feel sorry for Boris and others saying he is a twit. I don’t want to play to an echo chamber. Jonathan’s worried about me being too likeable but I think there’s enough in it if you want to not like Boris — he is competitive and wants power for its own sake.”

The script may change depending on political events — “Who knows, Boris could be prime minister.” As Barton sees it, Johnson is more interested in “the journey” of getting to power than the top job itself. “It’s like Jonny Wilkinson when he made the final kick that won the rugby World Cup — it was everything he had been training for, and then the next day he started suffering from depression.

“Boris wants to get there. It’s like when he saw that people voted for Brexit — he looked shocked.” Still, he thinks Johnson desperately wants to be prime minister and regrets standing down as foreign secretary over Brexit. “It doesn’t come down to policies but the best person to run the country — and he believes that is him.”

Daniel Hambury/@stellapicsltd

In preparation, Barton has been reading up on Johnson and speaking to those who know him. “Remember when he said the EU would make us straighten our bananas?” he says. “We laugh because it is so ridiculous. A lot of people say it’s all an act and he’s a manipulative, nasty person with vaulting ambition. Others say he’s fun, he’s chaotic but great. I think he’s something in the middle. He said it can be useful to appear not to know what you’re talking about to disguise the fact that you actually don’t know what you are talking about.”

Once he has his Johnson suit on, Barton says he feels like his character. He’s slighter than the MP but impersonates his voice eerily well, and is tempted to dye his hair for the role. “My daughter warned me against it because it damages it forever and it may not grow back. I’m not bothered. I can shave it and get parts as a skinhead. Last time, in the TV show the wig was more Michael Fabricant than Boris. He’s cut it now — I wonder if it is thinning, or if he loses his blondness will it be like Samson losing his power?”

Or his hair could go orange and Barton would have to play Trump. He laughs at the prospect: “I would let most politicians in my house but I wouldn’t let Trump in. Apart from the politics, he is such a dislikeable human being.”

When Barton was younger his father stood as an MP. “He was a solicitor who moved to Hong Kong [after his parents divorced] and became a magistrate. People were always after his blood and he was quite a lot of fun. My stepfather was a psychoanalyst and the complete opposite of my father.” His mother was an editor and wrote biographies of Wilkie Collins and Thackeray.

Barton’s children have followed him into drama. His daughter Cara, aged 17, played the younger version of Andrea Riseborough’s character in National Treasure with Robbie Coltrane. His son is at film school in Bournemouth.

After The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson he can be seen in Harry Michell’s TV comedy The Ilkley, where he is murdered because he is mistaken for someone else, and a film about Iraq with Keira Knightley. But first he’s inviting Johnson back to his former stomping ground in north London to see himself on stage.

The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson is at the Park Theatre, N4 (020 7870 6876, parktheatre.co.uk) from May 9

Park Theatre new 2019 season - in pictures

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