(Edited highlights of the panel's review)

ALKARIM JIVANI:
It's great to see proper opposition to this Government. Bremner is very slick, very clever and occasionally very funny, such as the bit where he is Blair with a Bush speech on his autoque or when he does John Prescott transmogrified into Les Dawson. The problem is that the laughter is too much on one note. For true political satire, you have to laugh as much out of discomfort as you do out of mirth. I thought he needed to be more vicious and venomous. It felt too slick and controlled. You laugh, but you don't wince enough, although I did wince during John Bird's Robert Mugabe impression, but only because his accent seemed to go from Harare via Tredegar. The real problem is that Bremner is known as a TV comedian and the West End stage doesn't serve him very well. It's too wide an expanse for him to fill. The other issue is that on television he uses make-up and wigs, but a lot of the people he does here come from television. He can mimic the stylistic text of programmes they are in, which he can't do on stage. I was disappointed.

BONNIE GREER:
I have never actually seen Rory Bremner before and I wasn't prepared for it. I laughed during the whole set. What really moved me was that he was almost inarticulate to a certain extent. He is very angry at a lot of things. He is angry at Blair, at American involvement and so forth. I guess you can't get that on television, because what the stage gives you that television can't is the real live thing happening. You can feel his rage. I think that's very powerful.

MARK KERMODE:
I wanted more edginess. I wanted a reason to get up off the couch and go into the theatre. In fact what I got was something which made me long for the comfort of the sofa and made me feel that the ideal time for it was Friday night on TV. I thought some of the material was rather lazy, considering the amount of political stuff happening at the moment. There were gags about politicians which really should have stuck right into the dark heart of politics, but actually skated the surface. The impressions were very good. Being in the room with somebody possessed of many voices was entertaining. I just didn't think that the material itself was edgy enough for the live environment.

MARK LAWSON:
I thought his technical facility with the voices was impressive. Blair's voice has changed. It's got more and more estuary English. We will see this example of Blair talking to his son, Leo. Bremner has kept pace with the changes in the voice. Some people separate the script and impersonations. The impersonation in itself is a form of satire.

This transcript was produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to correct serious errors.