Posted in: Comics, Current News, Pop Culture | Tagged: Alastair Campbell, Alison Steadman, Andy Zaltzman, Jeremy Hunt, london, richard herring, spitting image, west end

Jeremy Hunt At Spitting Image's Gala Night in London's West End

Last night saw the gala performance of the Spitting Image Musical: Idiots Assemble at the Phoenix Theatre in London's West End.

Last night saw the gala performance of the Spitting Image Musical: Idiots Assemble at the Phoenix Theatre in London. A star-studded affair, the notable attendees this time were political as well as performance-based – although is there much of a difference these days? Spitting Image has been running in one form or another for forty years, parodying popular and political figures of the day in rubber puppet form as topical satire. It has rarely left the British consciousness, though the recent BritBox version did its best to try. Spitting Image has long suffered from the problem that critics compare every new iteration to their favourite sketches cherry-picked from yesteryear and find any new version lacking but as a whole people still utterly love the puppets. And last night's show, that love was felt viscerally across the audience. And, it made me laugh like, well, like I remember laughing way back when.

And what an audience! I found myself seated next to Richard Herring, Andy Zaltzman, Alison Steadman and more. Big political beasts like the current Chancellor Of The Exchequer Jeremy Hunt were in attendance, as were former strategist and spokesman for Tony Blair Alastair Campbell, chair of the Committees on Standards and Privileges Sir Chris Bryant and former minister and Prime Ministerial candidate Alison Leadsom. Alison was seen to laugh uproariously at the show, aside from when the Royal Family – or Boris Johnson – were being portrayed.

And there really was a lot to laugh at. The show felt cathartic as if an entire audience were able to exhale what they had been building up for years. But the show started off small, the cartoons and caricatures that form the base of the show, drawn out across the stage screen, line by line, until it rises. It embeds the entire show in the art of caricature, bawdy, rude and brash, tabloid and terrific, and slowly easing the audience into who it may be lampooning – and how.

Spitting Image: Idiots Assemble starts off in a fun fashion, with the King and Queen commissioning the very tiny Tom Cruise to gather a crack team to save the fabric of the nation in time for Charles' coronation, represented by a pair of worn underwear, surrounded by an incompetent family and all under the watchful eye of narrator Sir Ian McKellen, was a very fun way to start, but it's their arrival at Downing Street and the arrival of the Great Beasts of the Tory Party who "every few weeks choose a new leader" that was the first really big moment of the show,  monstrous puppets coming through the audience, a praying mantis of a Sir Rhys Mogg, a cocooned caterpillar of a cigar-chomping Therese Coffey, the vampire bat that is Dame Priti Patel and one who would become a real star of the show, Suella Braverman as the possessed girl from the Exorcist. Her later masturbation scene using a public speaking podium followed by her dance number based on the music video Thriller and renamed Suella, were real highlights of the show. That they had to pass Jeremy Hunt on their way through the crowd, much to his amusement, only made last night's version of the show better, as the creatures are charged with creating culture war detractions while all the time repeating that "Jeremy Hunt says the economy is f-cked!"

And throughout the show, we have Harry and Megan commenting from the royal box which they have inexplicably gained access to, which began decided to count as her West End debut and Harry used as a chance to plug his book. On the other side of the stage, the other box was annexed by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping criticised the very idea of satire itself. But neither Putin or Megan would stay in their boxes for long.  Putin got a gloriously over-the-top dance number to himself, Putin On The Blitz, which was only bettered by the arrival of an extraordinary Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the battlefields of Ukraine, enacting the kind of justice we could all fantasise about.

Former Prime Minister John Major introduced himself as a necromancer and promised to return someone from the dead in the first half, so we were all waiting for the return of Maggie, who did not disappoint, eliciting proper pantomime-style boos and cheers from the crowd simultaneously, something writer of the show Al Murray was especially proud of. And it's true, compared to the current lot, we miss her. Because by then, we were forgetting the puppeteers, these puppets were being treated by the audience as the real thing and new ones got cheers as if it were the actual person coming on stage.

The gathering team consisting of tiny Tom Cruise, RuPaul, Tyson King, Greta Thunberg, Megan Markle, Angela Rayner, Idris Elba, began to gain superheroic status, dressing as familiar Marvel superheroes, with Kier Starmer's increasingly desperate attempts to join the team with very boring, procedural issues heightened by being portrayed as Aquaman and Superman. Every team of heroes needs a team of villains to fight, being led by Boris Johnson with schoolboy Rishi Sunak as a sidekick and including Rupert Murdoch, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump, James Corben and an astonishing Elon Musk who arrives on stage as a Tesla, which then transformed into Transformer Elon. And all in aid of making Boris Johnson the new British King instead of Charles, which did seem out of character for many of the egos portrayed on that stage, and made Boris a more dangerous demagogue than the bumbling oaf he prefers to portray himself as. Well, he did always want to be World King.

But some of the great moments of the show were from characters who appeared for a few seconds, such as Tony Blair being dragged off stage by the hand of history, Kanye West's attempt to join the team through word salad, and Bryan May rocking out for the finale number. Nigel Farage with his testicles swinging out has to deal with Tyson Fury trying to be woke but still packing a punch, and even the Metropolitan Police for a reprise of Chas And Dave's Rabbit song, replaced with Racist, and the killer rewritten line, "we've got more bad apples than Sainsbury's" which I'd have chopped off a little finger for.

Oh and yes, there was the musical number with female members of the Cabinet riding singing penises, led by Carrie Johnson in a choreographed dance routine with a very happy ending. But while this show is not subtle in any way, it can pull on the heartstrings. King Charles' tea party with a coke-addled Peruvian immigrant Paddington Bear, reprised the scene with the Queen for the Platinum Jubilee, which moved straight into a version of Queen's We Will Rock You, as We Will Rule You, a collaboration that would  later continue into Charles singing a version of Bohemian Rhapsody to his dead mother, concluding with "I never really mattered, anyone can see, I never really mattered to Mummy…"

Pulled the heartstrings, in the most unexpected way, but they were saving their final punch for the end. A friend of mine at the show told me that he did find himself sickened that certain politicians were happy to laugh along at the show that mocked them, even as real-world problems, poverty, strikes, and homelessness surround us. Spitting Image may have felt the same, and the final numbers kick hard by showing those exact scenes on monitors as the Tory Party fights amongst themselves. It was happy for everyone to laugh at these politicians, royals and celebrities, but wasn't letting you out of that theatre without kicking hard over the consequences of all this.

Skilled puppeteers lip-synched their puppets, often up to four to a character, and the top Cruise character gave them license to create slow-motion action fight sequences, while they completely disappeared. The audio track also clearly showed signs of being repeatedly rewritten and rerecorded to keep the show up to date. Nicola Sturgeon was now on the run from the police, Boris Johnson was trying to find ways to make Nadie Dorries a baroness and kept resigning – to add new lines to a show, such as I saw with The Windsors: Endgame is one thing, but to have to constantly rerecord lines and have puppeteers learn the beats of them on a rolling basis, is an impressive feat in and of itself. They performed the show with poker faces, all the emotion was on the puppets. So when, puppetless, they finally took their bows, smiled, laughed and danced on stage freestyle, there was a rush of emotion and appreciation as what they had collectively achieved hit the audience in a rush. A standing ovation was the only possible response.

And then we all went to Bunga Bunga in Covent Garden for a post-show knees up, with pizzas from Rishi Sunak's Eat Out To Help Out, bottles of Furlough Merlot, and all the covid signage you could ant, and police banging pots and pans to keep order. Pictures, so many pictures, below. See who you can spot who I didn't. Spitting Image The Musical: Idiots Assemble runs in London until the 26th of August.

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