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,

DYSTOPIA 26

★★★½

“a fine production with tenderness and craft”

A papier-mâché texture softens every object on the Theatre503 stage, dissolving edges as if seen through memory, slightly out of focus. Elsewhere, the set is coming apart: a wall hangs unmoored in mid-air, severed from whatever should hold it up. It’s a fittingly hazy dreamscape for love you long time (already), Katie Đỗ’s play about how trauma travels through mother and daughter.

Directed by Jennifer Tang, the play follows Mai (Tuyen Do), newly arrived in an afterlife unlike the one she pictured, and her daughter Tâm (Molly Harris), reckoning with the shape her mother’s pain left on her life. Long ago, Mai’s husband Long (Jon Chew) betrayed her, and across the play we watch that old wound continue to swallow her: isolation deepening, fear tightening into an anger she never lets go of. That inheritance shadows Tâm too, not least through her friendship with a boy from church, Huy (Zheng Xi Yong): Mai’s distrust of men colours the friendship and stirs tension between mother and daughter. As the initial afterlife scene fades into memory, the two women circle each other across time, trying to find a way through what was passed down as much as left unsaid.

That story mostly unfolds in a naturalistic register, though it’s punctuated by heightened, physical interludes from movement director Dam Van Huynh — one stands out: a surreal, television-inflected sequence in which the actors conjure a ghoulish visage from little more than a veil. This moment captures Mai’s grief and dislocation most vividly, offering a glimpse of a bolder, stranger production.

The performances carry real detail throughout. Harris does a fine job giving Tâm a quieter register than pure anger, her helplessness apparent in the distance she can’t help forcing between them and in the quiet work of undoing what’s passed down. Do, meanwhile, fills Mai with a bitterness that reflects a lifetime spent trying not to be seen, loving sideways through snipes and backhanded compliments, always pushing Tâm towards a steady career or a good marriage. Chew brings real weight to Long without asking for sympathy he hasn’t earned. While Do and Harris might have done more to differentiate the ages their characters pass through; Yong fully embraces that range, lending Huy an energetic, lived-in quality whatever the era his character inhabits.

Beneath those performances sits writing clearly alert to the risk of melodrama: Tâm even remarks that her life feels like a soap opera, and there are moments, not least her own romantic entanglements, where the observation lands. But it doesn’t diminish the story; instead, the melodrama serves as a funhouse mirror, letting generational trauma unfurl in new ways rather than repeat.

That funhouse-mirror effect carries through the design, too. TK Hay’s set and costume design sustains the dreamlike quality, while Cheng Keng’s lighting is just as considered, shaping the stage with a sudden, sharp flash of blue, or a stop-start, stuttering quality in transitions that keeps shifts between memory and present feeling alive. Elena Peña’s sound design cleverly separates memory from afterlife, and Mai’s love of music runs as a gentle thread across the piece, though there’s more yarn left to pull; a production this attuned to memory could have let music carry more weight.

By its close, love you long time (already) tries to leave Mai with something akin to peace, a small slice of heaven after a lifetime of deep complication. Though I’m not fully convinced the production’s ending quite earns its wings, judging by the mother and daughter quietly sniffling in the row ahead of me, perhaps it lands exactly where it needs to. Ultimately, this is a fine production with tenderness and craft, and if the story of what mothers pass down to daughters hasn’t found a clean ending on paper, it clearly finds its mark in the room.

Tag Archives: Daniel Outis

DYSTOPIA 26: THE ROCK OPERA

★½

Leicester Square Theatre

DYSTOPIA 26: THE ROCK OPERA

Leicester Square Theatre

★½

“the band’s musicianship is genuinely impressive”