Tony! [The Tony Blair Rock Opera] - Park Theatre / Tour

Very interesting choice for a musical. I personally really enjoyed Hill's work on 'I Cant Sing!' and I'm happy to see him and Steve Brown collaborating again.

Also looks like this show will probably be on a smaller scale compared to 'I Can't Sing!', as that show's biggest issue, and one of the potential factors for it's early closure, was that it was too large in scale. It really should have started off smaller and it looks like Hill and Brown will be going down that route with this.

Now announced for Park theatre this summer!

Anyone any tips/advice on this theatre? Might make my first visit for this.

Made a last minute decision and am at the interval of the first preview. Very funny so far. If you’re a member of the Labour Party you might have a different view, but it makes the current Government look like saints in comparison. I don’t think the under 30s in the audience know who all the politicians are. The writers are in the audience too and gave a speech at the start. Looking forward to the second half.

I'm curious. Is this an actual 'rock opera' - i.e. through sung?

I'm not giving my personal view here, just the impression you get from the portrayal. It was interesting that no one in the audience would admit to having voted for Tony Blair when asked.


It is just a traditional musical. Acted scenes and songs. I wouldn't even say the songs were particularly operatic. A two piece band on an upper level. The cast don't have microphones, so most project well, but I don't know how clear the sound will be on the upper level (which I wouldn't recommend having sat there in the past, as the viewing angle is difficult).

Oh, that's a shame! I'm glad to know in advance, though. Thank you!

Haha, I knew as soon as I’d posted that someone would comment about that. The original line was about voting Labour (or New Labour).

Politics is perfect material for comedy (or a mega hit musical which is almost exclusively about politics, war and the founding fathers). This is very Spitting Image in style, with zany Harry Hill. But yes, there’s no shortage of funny material available for Boris and I’m sure we’ll be mining that for years to come!

Lots of laughs in a hit and miss musical that is well worth seeing, though it does reduce Tony Blair, for the most part, into an amusing nice-but-dim sidekick to the "real" drivers in his life, Peter Mandelson, Cherie Blair and Princess Diana. . .

Some spoilers follow. . .

In the last song only does Tony Blair get a real solo number, in which he displays genuine agency: "The Whole Wide World is run by A--holes." For this song only does Charlie Baker get to imbue Tony Blair with charisma, force and agency, even if it is only to make excuses for his failings.

Otherwise, Harry Hill's conception of Blair's life is one in which he is the junior partner in multiple double acts, driven either by the little "stick" between his legs, in the case of his wife, Cherie, or a literal big stick that his political adviser master, Peter Mandelson, beats him with, to ever amusing effect.

Charlie Baker's affable goofy beta grin makes him an excellent comic foil, in these multiple double acts of his life, and it his double act partners that do all the heavy comic lifting.

By far the funniest performance is given by Howard Samuels, as Mandelson, but also as Dick Cheney, and also as Alastair Campbell, diabolically and camply carrot-and-sticking Blair again and again and again. Samuels so ebulliently and conspiratorially commands the plot that I was ever amused by his Machiavellian bullying antics.

Although she gets less stage time, as Cherie Blair, Mischief Theatre alumnus, Holly Sumpton, is a laugh riot as a seductive, dominating Cherie Blair, effusing political machinations in Blair's ear even during the coital act.

And although she gets even less stage time, and has to rely on batting eyelids more than actual dialogue, Madison Swan's flirtatious and flighty and conniving Princess Diana had me laughing out loud.

As you would expect from Hill, there are more laughs than insights in this musical (unlike the Boris Johnson play, earlier in this same space) but by God, it is enjoyable to see Blair (and us, his voters) get beaten down again and again and again.

3 and a half stars from me.

This is just a big case of ‘Why?’. I get why a Harry Hill project would have been tempting for The Park Theatre, but how this script and the risible music ever got past the workshop stage, I don’t understand.

The time for a pastiche/panto about Blair is well and truly past, unless a writer has something to say that hasn’t already been observed a million times before in a variety of satirical ways.

I would have thought after that musical debacle at The Palladium, Harry Hill and Steve Brown may not have been all that keen to repeat the experience, even at a fringe theatre without Simon Cowell and his hubris.

A musical comedy is a such a hard thing to get right and after the try-outs for this show earlier in the year, I would have thought that The Park Theatre Artistic Director would have had a good long mull over whether it was ever going to of a high enough quality to do a run there.

I hope at the very least Hill’s name is putting lots of bums on seats for the theatre if that was the motivator for giving house room to such an embarrassingly sub-par production, but the night I was there it most certainly wasn’t sold out.

As a name it sounds like a fun night out but I remember the reviews. Is it getting a rewrite ?

I've seen it twice, once at the original workshop and then again as the "finished" version this year. It hadn't improved and I'm staggered they're trying to tour it.