A naked pamphleteering exercise: Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image The Musical, at Phoenix Theatre, reviewed

Nothing demonstrates the inanity of profanity like an undercooked comedy. The famous Spitting Image puppets have returned in a political musical that’s more cuddly than cutting. Writers Matt Forde and Al Murray add a lot of swearing to their punchlines without understanding why. The temptation to use the F-bomb is a warning sign from the writer’s internal editor: ‘Delete and try again.’ To enliven bad writing with curse words is to mistake the symptom for the cure.

And the show chooses feeble or irrelevant targets. Rishi Sunak appears as a soppy head prefect who plots with Boris to depose King Charles and take over the monarchy. Their scheme is opposed by a team of commandos including Tom Cruise, RuPaul and Angela Rayner who try to defend the king and restore Britain’s moral fibre. Not a great plot but it’ll do. The show approaches certain subjects with extreme caution. Rayner’s trademark insult, ‘scum’, is omitted and no mention is made of the ‘ginger growler’. Her boss, Keir Starmer, appears several times as a magical saviour in a cape. Hardly satire, more like propaganda.

On the plus side, the show benefits from excellent visuals, decent video work and inventive costumes. The puppetry is first-class, of course. The writers’ best idea is to seat Meghan and Harry in the royal box which they use as a platform to plug Harry’s book. Each time he mentions Spare, the price has fallen. Decent gag.

Act Two abandons satire altogether and turns into a naked pamphleteering exercise. The writers assume that the entire crowd hates Brexit and longs to see its prejudices confirmed. Suella Braverman is depicted as a sex-crazed midget who dances on a gravestone inscribed ‘RIP British humanity’. This must refer to Braverman’s attempt to tighten our borders and to deny money to trans-European gangs of people traffickers and slave traders.