New musical of Sunak’s election campaign premieres in London during polling week

Photo credit: Alice Meyer

A new original musical, Rishi Sunak’s Doing A Musical!, will run at Waterloo East Theatre from 2-6 July, having being written in just a month.

Writers Rob Gathercole (Faking Bad - The Unauthorised Breaking Bad Parody Musical) and Joe Venable (On Your Bike) had hoped to write their show in the autumn, ahead of an October election - but when Sunak made his surprise announcement, they found themselves with a dramatically sooner deadline!

The show tells the story of Rishi Sunak (Kurran Dhand) trying to win over the electorate by staging a musical about himself - hampered by the writers he’s hired, who are surprisingly unsympathetic to him.

Joe Venable said: “We both agreed it would be far too difficult – but in the end we felt we had to do it.

“Like anyone in their twenties, I’ve lived under the Conservatives for my whole adult life - I can’t remember anything else - and honestly, satirists have never had it so good. So it feels nice to honour the end of the era with a proper send-off.”

Rob Gathercole said: “On 22 May, we didn’t have a single lyric written, note scored or Sunak impersonation nailed.

“We snapped into producing mode - and were very lucky to find a theatre willing to host us for a full week. The Waterloo East Theatre has been incredible.

“It’s actually lovely to make a show so fast - we all want theatre to be relevant and engaging, and writing a show in a month guarantees you aren’t dated by the time you get to the stage.”

Directed by Mimi Pattinson, the production features four actors and a live pianist, and features Sunak at loggerheads with Sir Keir Starmer (Katie Pritchard), whose anthems include ‘Paint The Town Beige’ and ‘Things Can Only Get Slightly Better’.

It is the only show in London currently offering a concession for “soon-to-be-unemployed Tory MPs.

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