Brighton Year-Round 2024
Drop the Dead Donkey: The Reawakening
Hat Trick & Simon Friend Entertainment
Genre: Adaptation, Comedy, Contemporary, Drama, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Theatre
Venue: Theatre Royal Brighton
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
Let me say at once the allegations about David Attenborough and those primates are false! And as for the electrocution of the great and not quite late Sir Trevor. Well it’s complicated. Andy Hamilton’s and Guy Jenkin’s Drop the Dead Donkey: The Reawakening directed by Derek Bond arrives at Theatre Royal Brighton till March 9th. The acclaimed TV series, which ended in 1994, is back from the grave. And so are most of the cast, 30 years on.
If you saw the TV series you’ll have booked. If you haven’t, do book. This is as fresh as an AI paint set, and far more transgressive than the original. The fizziest, most outrageous assault on common decency since – I’ll leave it to the gibbons. A must-see.
Directed by Derek Bond, Associate Director Indiana Lown-Collins, Set and Costume Designer Peter McIntosh, Lighting Design Peter Mumford, Sound Designer Ella Wahlstrom, Video Designer Dan Light, Composer Max Pappenheim, Fight Director Terry King
Costume Supervisor Yvonne Milnes, Props Supervisor Kate Dowling for Propworks, Production Manager Ben Arkell, Marketing Maidwell Marketing, Press Story House PR,
For Simon Friend Entertainment General Manager Hanna Osmolska, Associate General Manager Tanya Truman, Production assistant Mia Franey
Till March 9th and touring
Review
Let me say at once the allegations about David Attenborough and those primates are false! And as for the electrocution of the great and not quite late Sir Trevor. Well it’s complicated. Andy Hamilton’s and Guy Jenkin’s Drop the Dead Donkey: The Reawakening directed by Derek Bond arrives at Theatre Royal Brighton till March 9th. The acclaimed TV series, which ended in 1994, is back from the grave. And so are most of the cast, 30 years on.
Before the horror, a thing of beauty. Well two. A video showing star reporter Damien many years ago through the rubble of Lebanon strikes (mmm, Hamilton’s close to the wire here) and disasters, always pointing to a teddy-bear. The same one.
Now though, there’s a swish TV studio The Truth (not Truth Social, mind) designed by Peter McIntosh with Peter Mumford’s lighting and Dan Light’s super-slick red/blue newsroom video, a vast screen emitting everything from tweets to warzones (and that’s just Truth’s studio). They provide one of the most detailed sets since 2:22 hit here along with Ella Wahlstrom’s punchy sound and Max Pappenheim’s button-holing newsy themes. And there’s a flashing coffee machine called Sonya.
Someone has brought them back from the virtual dead, or we might say reawakening: that sounds creepy. Don’t worry. It is. Typically bumbling editor George (Jeff Rawle) falls foul of Sonya but he’s a happy man, marrying a North Korean refugee. But who on earth wants him back?
There’s multiple surprises for him and a few others. Old colleagues corpse each other by their arrival. Previously gambling rogering drinking Dave (Neil Pearson) with a secret only George soon knows about: and sobriety, as incredulously he’s a sort of new man. There’s wry deputy editor Helen (Ingrid Lacey) who hates herself for being here but is broke.
And later there’s fake-news-originator-with-teddy-bear himself Damien (Stephen Tomkinson). In a wheelchair. Those action-packed fake news exploits finally caught up with him. Not to mention wannabe chief presenter right-entitled Sally Smedley (Victoria Wicks) stiffer and more strident than Theresa May trying to ABBA her way to a smile. With her US agent, Sally demands equal billing with Damien.
Of course it’s TV CEO Gus (Robert Duncan) who used AI to disguise his voice. And later he pronounces immortally: “AI frees us from the tyranny of thinking!” And that’s the aesthetic we love, along with “the sperm of negativity” and such other gems worthy of Humphrey Lyttleton. Gus wants them all back.
That’s along with ass-kicking black-leather HR supremo Joy (Susannah Doyle) wielding new rules; and mysterious burrowing Malread (Julia Hills) and a – weather girl Rita (Kerena Jagpal) unpaid intern but landed with a sexist badge defunct before she was born. But her grandmother admires some of them, and she admires one herself. But – never meet your heroes?
Gus won’t say who his mysterious backers are. They sound American. But then everyone very rich does. As the team flounder to not reprise their 90s selves and abjectly fail for the most part, the ad-libs and deadlines draw nearer. There’s a practice run with the death of the Pope, but be careful what you headline.
And soon, they’re live. It is truly terrible. Whether is Damien’s Alpha-scrunched male in a wheelchair or Sally wanting to tell the truth about woke liberal figures, or return to underwear modelling. Or Malread looking aslant as she draws conclusions.
The video design allows us to see live reactions to this brave new channel with its bratty old crew blinking like moles in the 2020s. If this team were a sleeper it’d terrify Prince Charming.
As if that weren’t enough, there really are live responses. Hamilton (spotted skulking like Mephistopholes) is spraying every night with the latest headlines: the upcoming budget’s referenced; tomorrow it’ll be different.
Suella Braverman shooting pangolins in Rwanda is admittedly too good a gag to retire, but anyway Dave’s writing her obituary “for something to do”. For a moment I thought I’d missed something magnificent. Bless. Sunak’s photo was mistaken for one of Gandhi, or as Rita reminds us, Sir Ben Kingsley playing Gandhi. There was a Keir Starmer joke but I ashamedly confess… I fell asleep. George is still continuously thwarted from telling any of his, you’ll be glad to know.
Sadly a couple of original series members have recently died; but new faces seamlessly take up their mantles and spirit. This is a first-rate cast, there’s literally not a dropped moment, and all nine bounce off each other and their material, kept airborne by new injections every night. Of something.
If you saw the TV series you’ll have booked. If you haven’t, do book. This is as fresh as an AI paint set by David Hockney, and far more transgressive than the original. The fizziest, most outrageous assault on common decency since – I’ll leave it to the gibbons. A must-see.
