‘Punishingly dull – but the crowd loved it’: Next to Normal, at Wyndham’s Theatre, reviewed

The Constituent is a larky show about violence against female politicians. A strange subject for a comedy. Anna Maxwell Martin plays a vapid but well-meaning MP, Monica, who receives unwelcome attention from a sinister dropout, named Alec (played by James Corden).

Alec’s backstory is quite a puzzle. He used to work as an MI6 spymaster in Afghanistan, where he persuaded senior Taliban commanders to operate as double agents. While off-duty he seduced an NHS ward sister who happened to be nursing soldiers on the battlefield in Kandahar.

That, at least, is the story he gives Monica. Alec says he married the nurse but they split up after having kids. Then he started job-hunting. Instead of pursuing a career as a senior intelligence officer, he started installing burglar alarms. This is how he meets Monica: he’s fixing the electronics in her constituency office.