Side-splitting, shocking and puppeted to perfection
It’s hard to find a starting sentence that quite sums up the experience of Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image the Musical. Spawned from the well loved satirical TV first aired in the 80’s the show takes all the well known political and celebrities pundits of our generation and throws them into this circus.
The ‘plot’ is simple – the fabric of society is falling apart, only this time it is a pair of actual fabric underpants. To be crowned King, Charles must assemble a crack team of heroes to take on the villains. The plot is a very loose framing device to allow sketches and rewrites of popular show tunes to be strung together for some sort of outcome.
Written by comedians Al Murray, Matt Forde, Sean Foley they have a difficult task to appeal to cross generations. When you add in that the political landscape is so farcical that it’s almost satire itself, some of the gags seem lazy and dated. Particularly the Idiots Assemble leader Tom Cruise seems like the least current take – although I will never tire of him dancing with Stormzy. As always the show claims not to be biassed with the pre-show warning announcing that they will offend everyone so if you’re sensitive – F*** off.
Highlights in the writing are definitely the choice to have Suella Braverman be an Evil Dead/Ring/Exorist Possessed child – fucking the media office lectern. Inspired.
The show generally errs on the side of safe gags, by which I mean not in terrible bad taste. Occasionally they did lose the audience to inhales of shock – particularly with reference to a journalist’s head in a bag. (There was also a lady who shouted out and left after a Ukraine skit). The most difficult moment to navigate was the “No I Regret Nothing” song from Bojo and Rishi Schoolboy, to the tune of you guessed it Non, Je ne regrette rien. As the characters sing images of Covid, Food Banks and Nurses Strikes flash up on the back, the silence palpable. It is the only moment in the show that feels out of place because it lacks the humour, the pain and truth of the moment hitting home. At the end of it the audience are confused on whether to applaud the satire and settle on booing the characters.
This leads us to the ‘Musical’ aspect of the show. Is it a musical? Questionable. There are fun rewrites of popular tunes, the Met’s Misogy Knees Up being quite an impressive one. But do witty lyrics and a couple of signs make a musical, thats up for debate.
With over 100 puppets it really is a spectacle of design, from North east favourites Ant & Dec to Jurgen Klopp the puppets are just mind blowing. Particularly for some moments just 30 seconds long – you really do feel like you’re getting your moneys worth. I had two personal favourite puppets which had to be the Praying Mantis Jacob Rees-Mogg, the distinction was uncanny and then possibly the greatest puppet design of all time were the singing, dancing, penis’. And when I say singing – the mouth holes are absolutely where you are imaging them. If we’re being totally honest I even asked the cast about the fabric/make up as I just couldn’t stop thinking about them.
The team of voice actors made up of Oliver Chris, Jason Forbes, Matt Forde, Luke Kempnery, Lorna Laidlaw, Jackie Lam, Al Murray, Shri Patel and Kathryn Drysdale, are really quite impressive. Some Impressions end up a little more energy than accurate but the performances overall are stellar.
Obviously with pre-recorded voices there are moments where the show could breath a little fresher. Ie. If the audience are really laughing sometimes the next lines come in too soon, with a live actor you can adapt to this. Also plenty of times I missed the lyrics in songs because the voices were too quiet.
Where the show really excels is the puppeteering. An honest to god triumph, the sheer skill to be wearing an extra upper half of a body, be acting as the character from the waist down and then neutrally puppeteering on the top half. Give this whole team all of the awards. Although the whole team are slick and flawless, so much so that I often forgot they were puppets, I will give a shout out to whichever legend was Nicola Sturgeon’s legs – no greater leg performance has ever been given in heels.
Overall it’s a raucously funny fever dream of a show which won’t leave you disappointed.