Spitting Image The Musical - Birmingham Rep / Phoenix

Also renamed as “The Musical” so guess this thread needs to move categories!

As we don't yet have a 'Satire with Songs' section, I've moved the thread from 'Plays' to 'Musicals'.  

If you measure success in terms of show quality, it was one. In terms of paying bums on seats, it was a bit of a disaster based on my own experience (one third full) and a few other accounts, which is a great pity.

I hope they can find an audience in the West End. They'll need not to be greedy with pricing.

I got a Rush Ticket for this from TodayTix last Sunday as I wanted to see what it was like but didn't want to pay the full prices.

I was in row G of the stalls. It wasn't very full. They had closed the upper circle and FOH staff were moving people from the back of the stalls further forward to empty seats.

If you aren't too offended by people making jokes about politicians, royals and celebrities and you like silly, slightly rude comedies then you might enjoy it. If you don't like that sort of thing then it is probably one to avoid.

Definitely not my thing.

I saw a couple of minutes of King Charles ad Harry on Good Morning. Allison Hammond and Dermott O'Leary were trying to keep a straight face.

Saw the matinee, and preferred the songs (entertaining and well-choreographed) to the book (on the nose, no edge humour, more smiles than laughs, with a couple of glorious exceptions).

The fact that you don't get the voice talents live is well-advertised, but nonetheless a disappointment. (When Simon Lipkin does puppets, it's always as much fun to watch his expressions as watch the puppets lol).

The Suella Braverman puppet is funny.

Some spoilers follow. . .

It's right to call this a musical as the musical numbers are the most fun: it's sly and fun to hear Queen's "We Will rock you" subverted into "We Will rule you;" it's cheeky and fun to hear the Special's masterpiece, "Enjoy yourself (it's later than you think)" sung primarily by the dead Queen dancing in the aisles; it's scathingly supremely fun to hear and see Michael Jackson's "Thriller" become "Suella," where the dancing monsters are celebrating our increasingly debauched cruelty as a society; and it's brilliantly satirically fun to hear Boris Johnson (and Rishi Sunak) gleefully sing Edith Piaf's "No, I regret Nothing," as the victims of all his lies are displayed behind him on a screen.

What distinguished the last song from most of the humour in this show is that it had more than one layer. One layer would be "Boris Johnson did this," which is generally how the humour in this show is: eg: "Harry wrote and promotes a book, Spare" is a one-note joke we see repeatedly throughout the show, as Harry constantly bigs up his book "Spare" from the "Royal Box" at the side of the stage (without commenting further on how Harry or anyone else feels or reacts to his promoting the book). But the Johnson song is not so much about the one note joke of how much he did and got away with, it focuses instead on his narcissistic lack of remorse (his real downfall, as someone whose every body language and utterance suggests he cares about nobody but himself, certainly not anyone stupid enough to obey rules set by him).

So, while I liked most of the songs, I loved that one.

And while I was meh about most of the book (I mean, Ian McKellen telling us about his panto role in "Mother Goose" and doing bits from his career only reminded me that for the same money you could see real Ian McKellen do all that live in "Mother Goose" with ten times better comic timing and actual charm, including a similar plot about a bunch of misfits on a mission to save the world), I thought the Nigel-Farage-mans-the-border sketch was a laugh riot. Basically, Farage goes back to being Old Farage, the one that used to say racist things before he cleaned up his act, and he lets loose on our heroes, including acting out the German sketch from "Fawlty Towers" every time Jürgen Klopp showed up lol, only to get battered when he turns on the world boxing champion lol.

Anyhow, this has some really good laughs amid the smiles. I had 3 stars of fun.

PS: for a Saturday matinee, this was very sparsely populated, so if this appeals to you, act quickly, as I wouldn't be shocked if the run was curtailed.

Why they gave this a west end run and not what’s new pussycat is one of life’s great mysteries …. Still one of the best musicals I’ve seen in a long long time standing ovation every performance

I think it's the 'Stranger Things' show coming in after this.