Review: IDIOTS ASSEMBLE - SPITTING IMAGE THE MUSICAL, Phoenix Theatre
Photo credit: Mark Senior
Britain’s best loved puppet comedy show Spitting Image, first broadcast in 1984, ran for 18 series before having a reboot in 2020, and is now gracing the West End stage, following a run earlier this year at Birmingham Rep.
This reincarnation, written by Al Murray, Matt Forde and Sean Foley, with the latter also directing, comes with a warning – if you are easily offended, don’t go and watch the show!
In the premise of this show, the fabric of society (in this case a pair of white undies) is wearing thin and King Charles cannot be coronated until they are fixed. Enter (rather bizarrely) Tom Cruise who assembles a team to fix the British society, with Boris Johnson’s team (too rude to print) trying to steal the crown for themselves.
The array of characters performed is vast, with all of your favourites Ant & Dec, Gary Linekar, King Charles, Prince William, Prince Harry, Adele, and Ed Sheeran making appearances, along with politicians such as Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Donald Trump, Liz Truss and a particularly satirically well done Jacob Rees-Mogg.
The set is multi-functional and purposefully spacious allowing for the puppeteers to move around and avoid the need for stage crew to be on and off the stage. There are lots of larger set pieces which need to have space to hold puppet and operator so this has all been extremely well thought out.
The slightly disappointing factor in this show is that the voice performers aren’t live. The voices of the characters are pre-recorded by stars such as Debra Stephenson, Matt Forde, Al Murray and Kathryn Drysdale and whilst they are brilliant at what they do, it takes away a lot of the live theatre aspect. It reduces the ability for interaction with the audience after gags and at times, the songs are hard to hear which, when you have a band and live singers, you can adjust the sound levels accordingly. It therefore means that most of the gags in the songs are lost to just incoherent words.
Each and every puppeteer are the life and soul of this show though and are an exquisitely talented bunch who work together to operate numerous characters heads and limbs. A touch which is great to see is when the puppets need to stand up, the costume has made sure that the puppeteer’s bottoms match what the character is wearing at the time so bravo to Lotte Collett.
The way that the puppeteers operate their characters portrays exactly what the character is feeling, and they have to be very aware of their body’s ability to manipulate the puppet to essentially act. For most of the show, you forget that the puppeteers are operating the puppets – you can always see them but they are so good at what they do, you are engrossed in what the puppets are doing.
The show isn’t going to set the world alight, a lot of the jokes have been done before but it is an entertaining night at the theatre never the less and a must see for fans of the TV show.
*** Three stars
Reviewed by: Emma Rooney
Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image the Musical plays at the Phoenix Theatre until 26 August, with tickets available here.