Rishi Sunak faces the music

London musical comedy bids farewell to the PM

Rishi Sunak is getting a satirical stage send-off – with a new stage musical dedicated to the soon-to-be-ex-Prime Minister.

Rishi Sunak’s Doing A Musical! opens at Waterloo East Theatre in London on July 2 – two days before the general election widely expected to be a wholesale rout for the Tories - after being written in just a month.

Writers Rob Gathercole and Joe Venable had hoped to write their show in the autumn, ahead of an October election - but when Sunak made his surprise announcement, they found themselves with a dramatically sooner deadline.

The show tells the story of the PM - played by Kurran Dhand – trying to win over the electorate by staging a musical about himself - hampered by the writers he’s hired, who are surprisingly unsympathetic.

Musical comedian Katie Pritchard portrays Keir Starmer, saying: ‘The challenge will be capturing the excitement, derring-do and revolutionary spirit of Sir Keir. Never before have I been so excited to play such a boring person.’

Her songs include Paint The Town Beige and Things Can Only Get Slightly Better.

Meanwhile, Dhand says of his titular role: ‘Our run stretches past July 4, so it’s exciting to think I’ll be playing the role of Prime Minister for longer than the Prime Minister will be playing the role of Prime Minister.’

Venable, 29, previously wrote On Your Bike, about two food delivery riders, which won a best musical award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2021. He said: ‘Like anyone in their twenties, I’ve lived under the Conservatives for my whole adult life - I can’t remember anything else - and honestly, satirists have never had it so good. So it feels nice to honour the end of the era with a proper send-off.

His co-writer Gathercole previously wrote Faking Bad - The Unauthorised Breaking Bad Parody Musical.

Rishi Sunak’s Doing A Musical! runs at Waterloo East Theatre from July 2 to 6 at 7:30pm, directed by Mimi Pattinson.

Tickets are priced £16, or £14 for concessions – which includes students, over-60s and ‘soon-to-be-unemployed Tory MPs’.

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Published: 26 Jun 2024