When a TV station is called Truth News, you have to be suspicious. If you thought Drop the Dead Donkey, was funny in the 1990s – on stage now it’s hysterical.
Writers Andy Hamilton (who was in the audience for the first night at Cambridge Arts Theatre) and Guy Jenkin must be adding to the script daily during the tour. There were jokes about this week’s news.
Westminster has kindly provided the script.
The original cast of this this satire on a television newsroom are back.
They are older but just as devious, just as cynical – and still with immaculate comic timing. Now their news stories are chosen by an algorithm.
No one believes the news any more, says the amoral and pragmatic boss Gus (Robert Duncan) so they might as well not believe stuff that isn’t actually true.
The play opens with the earnest George (Jeff Rawle) wrestling with a coffee machine that works on voice recognition – but seems to be hard of hearing. Nothing you say to it stops it spluttering.
Meanwhile, he is joined on the stage one by one by his former workmates, each one puzzled to have been recruited after all these years.
The scheming Gus has gathered them together his old colleagues from Globelink News.
He’s heading a brand-new television station that he says will be “hyper NOW.” – “Disruptive, dynamic and diverse – full of gender fluids”. Everyone on the team, he announces triumphantly, has “something wrong with them.”
This is a lovely ensemble cast with wonderfully slick delivery (particularly Neil Pearson who has a lot of the best lines) playing characters who could not possibly work together without explosions.
From the original cast we also have Susannah Doyle as Joy, now promoted to Human Resources and out for revenge on the people once above her, Ingrid Lacey as Helen (the sane one) Neil Pearson as Dave, known for gambling, drinking, and having affairs with married women.
Victoria Wicks returns as Sally Smedley (the self-obsessed newsreader). Stephen Tompkinson is back as Damien, the reporter who always takes a child’s teddy bear and a tiny, bloodstained shoe to place on the rubble when reporting from disaster sites.
They are joined by Julia Hills as Mairead, an American investigative reporter keen on exposing scandals and Kerena Jagpal as the weather forecaster who is on unpaid work experience –as are all the backroom and technical staff.
At the end, there is just one moment of seriousness, tributes on a screen to Henry Davenport and Haydn Gwynne, two fine actors in the original cast who are no longer with us.
The rest is laughter. Kill for a ticket – they would.
Drop The Dead Donkey is at Cambridge Arts Theatre until Saturday, March 2. Then touring.
