The last time Alan Partridge graced the nation’s stages, he was trying his hand as a life coach, in Steve Coogan’s 2008 tour Alan Partridge and Other Less Successful Characters. The idea clearly stuck because, 14 years on, it’s been developed into a full show. Stratagem, Partridge tells us, is “a fun way to share knowledge that, I believe, will change your life.” And so begins a very satisfying two hours for fans of Coogan’s deathless alter ego, as Alan combines motivational PowerPoint with time travel, song-and-dance, and a relaxation exercise turned slanging match with an upstart protege.
The whole show, created with Coogan’s Partridge co-writers Neil and Rob Gibbons, is tight, well-worked and has its own satisfying little narrative arc, as the flimsiness of Alan’s life-coach pretensions is revealed. Coogan is far from the first comic to find pathos in the overreach of motivational speakers, but Stratagem doesn’t turn much fire on that soft target. Really, it’s just two hours of tremendous silliness, revelling in Partridge’s foot-in-mouth illness-at-ease, making hay in the chasm between his fussy, small-minded reality and the big-vision sophisticate he longs to be.
