Drop The Dead Donkey: The Reawakening! at Richmond Theatre

So often when I book a theatre show it is a no-brainer but very few are such obvious choices as an update to Drop The Dead Donkey written by the original team, Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, and staring many of the original cast.

Quickness got me my preferred seat, Dress Circle A24, for £37.5 on the very first night of the long tour. Quickness was necessary as the week was completely sold out, though it has already been booked to come back again in June.

The premise was simple, the original Globelink News team had been recruited to start a new algorithm-led TV news channel on the lines of Talk TV or GB News.

The cast came on stage one at a time to loud cheers from the audience and a chorus of "Oh Fucks! from those already there.

After that it was pretty much Drop The Dead Donkey as we lovingly remembered and loved it with the same characters behaving in the same way and saying the same sort of things. 

The dialogue was constantly funny and the one-liners came thick and fast. There were topical jokes too, such as a reference to Marcus Rashford who had been in the news just a couple of days previously.

There was some good physical jokes too, like George's run-ins with a voice-activated coffee machine, and with a light switch.

Drop The Dead Donkey: The Reawakening! was everything that I hoped it would be, and more. It was genuinely funny in its own right and being an update on an old favourite was a nice bonus.