Rishi Sunak’s Doing a Musical!: a gloriously funny satire

It’s not entirely impossible that someone in Tory HQ might, at some point in the last six weeks, have floated the idea of presenting Rishi Sunak as the star of his own musical as a way of popularising his image. Bizarre stunts are, after all, a mainstay of this campaign as the Lib Dems are only too painfully aware, and things are surely desperate enough in Downing Street. Sunak though, is no Boris, nor indeed an Ed Davey, which is one reason why the idea of him doing jazz hands across a stage is so amusing. At least it proves so here, albeit not in a way likely to get Tory spin doctors salivating.

Rishi Sunak’s Doing a Musical! was written in six weeks by Joe Venable and Rob Gathercole, and it has both a seat-of-the-pants energy about it and a polish that belies its astonishingly short gestation. The premise is indeed preposterous: Sunak (played with a winning lack of self-awareness by Kurran Dhand that borders on the slapstick) has employed a couple of impoverished writers to rehabilitate his image ahead of the election through the joyous medium of musical theatre – an idea that has echoes of Gordon Brown’s disastrous ‘smile’ videos during the dying days of the last Labour government. In truth, it’s simply a rather flimsy hook for Venable and Gathercole to hang a series of revue-style songs about the “stars” of the current election campaign. Trigger warning alert: this includes a Nigel Farage striptease in which the Reform leader strips down to a thong to reveal Clacton-on-Sea emblazoned on his buttocks.

By contrast Sunak’s big moment is a Mean Streets hip hop routine in which he laments having no Sky TV as a child. Liz Truss pops up as a Cruella de Vil-style avenger, mystified by lettuce and still banging on about cheese. Keir “have I told you how ordinary my background is?” Starmer is haunted by the ghost, both past and present, of Jeremy Corbyn. The line “things can only get slightly better” is a running gag. As is the dire state of arts funding, the mess both sides are in on the issue of trans rights and the fact neither the Tories nor Labour have anything to say about climate change.

The show is only 60 minutes long but it still runs out of steam about half-way through: you know the writers are in trouble when they resort to a plot strand involving a rogue AI computer. Sunak, too, is a bit of a Tory stooge rather than a specific caricature – Sky TV and his personal bank account not withstanding. Yet the writing is pin-sharp throughout, and also pleasingly knowing – one line is at the expense of the audience “who are just agreeing with everything we say”. I blanched when an audience member was invited on stage to kick a prostrate Sunak to death, until this too was deftly, if only fleetingly, subverted.

It’s beautifully performed by a four-strong cast, including Gathercole. The gag rate is impressively high, the song and dance routines slickly delivered. Alas the show itself, by definition, has a short shelf life. Happily I can’t see this being the case for Venable and his cast.

Until Jul 6. Tickets: 020 7928 0060; waterlooeast.co.uk