Puppet satire is back, and Britain has never needed it more. Created by Peter Fluck, Roger Law and Martin Lambie-Nairn, ITV’s Spitting Image was one of the most-watched shows of the 1980s and 1990s, watched by up to 15 million people at its peak. Every twenty-five-minute episode was infamously merciless in skewering and satirising that week’s politics and news. Now in 2023, Roger Law is back as ‘caricaturist supremo’, though Fluck and Lambie-Nairn aren’t involved.

Unfortunately, this live theatre presentation is doomed to not work as well as the beloved original TV show. Although writers Sean Foley, Al Murray and Matt Forde are heroically on hand to add in new bits of topical satire throughout the run, a live show needs to be rehearsed, choreographed, and, in the case of the voice actors, pre-recorded. As a result, the satire is as broad and general as possible: jokes about Tom Cruise being short, or Donald Trump being stupid, are unlikely to go out of style from one week to the next. You get more up-to-date and incisive satire from a Panto Dame’s ad libs.

Secondly, the thrill of Spitting Image is seeing the hilariously caricatured puppets up close. In a West End theatre, unless you are very, very close to the stage, you can’t see the exquisite detail in the design. Where the original uses small, model sets, this production needs massive video designs (Nina Dunn) to fill up the space visually, which doesn’t match the aesthetic.

The live show is still fast, funny, and mordant in all the right places. But, pushed beyond its short, weekly, episodic format, it just feels too long and bloated for a night out at the theatre. Definitely a trip down memory lane for those of a certain age, but probably only to remember how good it used to be.

Playing at the Phoenix Theatre 24 May – 26 August 2023.