DYSTOPIA 26: THE ROCK OPERA
Leicester Square Theatre
★½
“the band’s musicianship is genuinely impressive”
When asked why he’d moved away from writing political satire, Armando Iannucci — writer of The Thick of It and Veep — said the absurdity and self-satirising behaviour of modern politicians had made them impossible to parody. Figures like Trump, he argued, could no longer be accurately sent up: real life had simply become stranger than anything fiction could invent.
Dystopia 26: A Rock Opera clearly agrees, eschewing satire to deliver a show so on the nose that you wonder if Iannucci might be onto something — parody, on this evidence, has nothing left to say. Set in the fictional country of Dystopia, ruled by President Blame, whose propaganda promises “I’m always right,” the story is narrated and sung from prison by Beldon Haigh (Justin Skelton, who also wrote and produced the show), a fallen political fixer whose downfall stems from his dealings with Blame.
Blame’s allusion to Trump is so obvious you wonder why they bothered inventing a fictional stand-in at all, especially with lifelike dictators already stalking the stage (Putin on the drums, Kim Jong Un with a surprisingly competent turn on the electric guitar). He’s saddled with many of the same sins, too — Epstein Files, corruption, a refusal to accept an election result — all dutifully checked off.
Beneath all the box-ticking, there’s little else going on: Haigh’s fall stems from his dealings with Blame, who betrays everyone around him the moment they stop being useful, but the lyrics never get past broad strokes about “the system” and “corruption.” Targets are everywhere; not one of them lands.
The dialogue between songs fares little better — clearly scripted, yet delivered with a stiffness that only compounds the production’s problems. One of which is its over-reliance on AI. Almost all of the video and imagery projected on the surrounding screens is clearly AI-generated, lending the whole enterprise a certain perverse bathos: a rock opera railing against “the system” while leaning so heavily on artificial intelligence to build its own world. If irony wasn’t already dead, Dystopia 26: A Rock Opera might have just finished it off.
The second half switches focus from Blame to the arrival of a new revolutionary figure, Magnanimous Moon, who promises free money for all upon his election. The narrative sprawls from here, with an entire populace of newly minted millionaires oddly miserable, the power of friendship and a limp attempt at criticising capitalism along the way (checking off yet another target). This is less a Marxist revolution than the ramblings of a confused grandad down the pub.
Amid all this, a cameo from Nigel Farage — unwittingly reading lines that support a key part of the second act’s plot — is one of the few moments the show actually earns a belly laugh, and by some distance the biggest surprise of the night. Of everything he’s had to answer for this year, this may be the one he’ll most want to forget.
It’s a shame, because the band’s musicianship is genuinely impressive. Willie Logan’s lead guitar breathes life into several of the songs, Fiona Lynch has a striking voice, and there’s real delight in watching Dru Baker — playing both President Blame and his rival Magnanimous Moon — switch effortlessly between flute, saxophone and keyboard. Every member plays their instruments with real skill, and some of the songs come close to being enjoyable in their own right, but the package they’re wrapped in leaves you wondering whether ambition has eclipsed the band entirely.
There’s a decent band trapped somewhere inside Dystopia 26: A Rock Opera, and on the night’s evidence, glimpses of a sharper writer too. But between the AI-generated production, the toothless satire and the pub-philosophy politics, ambition has comprehensively outpaced execution. Halfway through, the cast bellow about the system we live in, raging that “we want our money back” — which, in the circumstances, feels almost prescient. Iannucci, it seems, still has the last laugh
DYSTOPIA 26: THE ROCK OPERA
Leicester Square Theatre
Reviewed on 16th July 2026
by Daniel Outis
Photography by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan,
