The last time I checked Stephen Harper didn’t drink scotch. But then again, he also hasn’t been found cavorting with young, salacious, female MPs, and he most definitely did not win that many seats in Quebec during the previous Federal election.

Michael Healey’s play Proud is a wild retelling of the 2011 federal election—very, very wild. While our stoic leader Stephen Harper is an all too familiar presence in Canadian’s lives (what has he gone and done now?), as leader of the ultra conservative Conservatives he isn’t normally surrounded by so much overt femininity. This femininity is found in the play’s conflict inducing, foul-mouthed, incendiary force Jisbella, single mother and highly-inexperienced Quebec MP—unless, of course you consider managing a St. Hubert to be the only credible experience necessary to sit in the House of Commons.

While our fictitious and facetious PM struggles in new territory, Michael Healy situates the audience in hilariously perfect Canadiana. The play opens to a dark stage, when the familiar opening notes of the CBC’s The National denote the start of the audience’s descent into political madness. Only there’s no Peter Mansbridge to comment on Harper’s precarious situation this time. All of the signifiers of Canadian politics can be found here, both for comedic effect as well as to remind the audience of the ever-present comedy—or perhaps horror—that our political system elicits, even without the ridiculous reimagining of the current distribution of seats in the House.

If his hairpiece doesn’t convince you, Andrew Wheeler’s impeccably robotic reimagining of Harper certainly will. The stiff arm movements and stilted legalese that characterize his speech are dead on, hardly needing to be exaggerated to be comical. What’s nice about Wheeler’s performance is that he doesn’t attempt to be some carbon copy of the PM, but rather the perfect caricature, at once ridiculously unlikeable for his ruthless politics, and surprisingly sympathetic in his pathetic attempts to play the average human.

The uproariously unstoppable Jisbella, played by Emmelia Gordon, only makes Wheeler’s mannerisms all the more comical. Gordon is not only able to provide some serious comedic power; she brings a dose of humanity to the play as she struggles to balance the rigours of a politic life she is unprepared for with single-motherhood.

What’s so successful about Proud is that it doesn’t take the easy route. Healy could have taken some easy shots at the Conservatives recent misfortunes and run with it. Instead he took perhaps one of the most monolithic Prime Ministers of date and used him as a jumping off point to astutely examine politics as a whole in the country. The play was certainly humorously critical of many of the Conservative party’s downfalls and despite the ridiculously exaggerated plot and heightened amorality, it suggests that the situation that Harper finds himself in is in fact not so improbable for any of our political parties really; perhaps a sneak peak into what Canadian politics would be like if we were a little closer to our American counterparts. Luckily it’s still only just a play and not a reality, for now of course.