Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image The Musical written by a tour de force comedy team made up of Al Murray (The Pub Landlord) Matt Forde (The Political Party) and double Olivier award winner Sean Foley (The Upstart Crow, The Play What I Wrote) makes its West End Premiere at the Phoenix Theatre in London.
Critically acclaimed when it was developed at the Birmingham Rep earlier this year, the show is directed by the Rep’s Artistic Director Sean Foley alongside a creative team spearheaded by the original Spitting Image co-creator, Roger Law.
Introduced by Master of Ceremonies Sir Ian McKellen, the musical features a stellar line-up of over 100 puppets of the great and the not so good. Tom Cruise is tasked by His Majesty The King to create the UK’s very own ‘Magnificent Seven’ of celebrity misfits – Tom Cruise, Greta Thunberg, Meghan Markle, Tyson Fury, RuPaul, Angela Rayner and Idris Elba – to save the nation from a cabal of dark forces seeking to destroy it – that’s all the usual suspects. And James Corden. They are joined by: Ant & Dec, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Keir Starmer, Stormzy, Vladimir Putin, The Tory Party Cabinet and many many many many many more.
The BAFTA and Emmy award-winning satirical Spitting Image television series originally ran for 18 series between 1984 and 1996, and was watched by over 15 million viewers. It recently made a popular return to TV on BritBox, where across official social media channels, Spitting Image content has been hugely popular with over 200 million views globally, three number 1 trending videos on YouTube and achieved critical praise across the political divide. Three one-off specials for ITV have also seen huge success on terrestrial television: with a 4.4 million audience achieving ITV’s highest Saturday night ratings at that time in four years.