Four decades after the acclaimed satirical sketch programme was first produced in the city, the latex stars of Spitting Image have returned to Birmingham for their first-ever live shows. Well, sort-of live. They’re puppets after all, and while their operators are clearly visible on stage - though you soon ignore their presence - the words their famous charges are saying are all pre-recorded by voice artists.

Not that you’d know it in this crash-bang-wallop production that’s as lively and anarchic as the TV original, mixing cutting-edge - as well as slapstick - satire, some fairly base (and occasionally x-rated) humour and colourful musical numbers to glorious comedic effect.

The puppets, puppeteers and impersonators are all fabulous, and while the pre-recorded dialogue means the show can’t think on its feet and adapt to changes in the political landscape as instantly as its writers Sean Foley, Al Murray (which might explain the three Queen songs) and Matt Forde might like, it does ensure the stars it mocks are voiced by the very best mimics.

And to avoid the need for constant amends - the show has been through three complete rewrites and this week’s resignation of Nicola Sturgeon led to more last-minute changes – the creators have played it safe by providing a narrative with room for adaptation as circumstances dictate. Director Foley admitted as much in a pre-performance email, at pains to point out that it was both a finished show, and “work in constant progress”, set to evolve as the run continues.

“The UK’s crazy mix of politics, celebrity and the Royal Family has perhaps never been a more heady or ever-changing brew,” he wrote. “That has been the joy and challenge of creating Spitting Image Live. Like its progenitor in the ’80s and ’90s, Spitting Image Live is a maverick, bastard, anarchic, ever-changing entity.”

Maverick is a well-chosen adjective, as the aforementioned plot sees Top Gun Tom Cruise himself hired to save the ailing UK by newly-crowned King Charles, assembling an unlikely magnificent seven celebrities including RuPaul, Greta Thunberg and Tyson Fury (but not Sir Keir Starmer, despite his best efforts) to come to the aid of the nation.

The team are recruited via Britain’s Got Talent-style auditions that allow a cavalcade of stars including the likes of Taylor Swift, Kanye West and Harry Styles to parade across the stage, with a fight between Angela Rayner and Jess Phillips earning some of the biggest laughs of the night, not least from the local MP herself, sat two rows in front of me. Fellow Brummie Alison Hammond’s predictably guffawing appearance also went down well, but politicians were what the full-house really came for, and the production more than obliged, skewering most of the current Tory cabinet (Liz Truss even briefly made an appearance, but wasn’t deemed worthy of a puppet) as well as the piece’s fellow villains Trump, Farage, Murdoch and Putin.

The partisan audience lapped it up, and even though (like the TV show) it was occasionally a bit hit and miss - at least a couple of the songs felt laboured, and the second half was a little clunky compared to the first - the laughs far outweighed the lulls. Better yet, the volume of characters is extraordinary (I’ve not even mentioned Boris, Rishi, Obama, Musk, Blair, Adele, Harry, Meghan and Camilla, but they’re all there - even the Queen), the impersonations pitch-perfect and a couple of showstopping numbers, notably the climax to the first half, brought the house down.

The actual finale was never going to match that, but whoops of delight and a standing ovation - not least for those fabulous puppeteers - confirmed this wholly original and ambitious stage show definitely earns a rubber-stamp of approval.

Four stars

Reviewed by Steve Adams at The Rep, Birmingham on Thursday 16 February. Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image Saves The World continues to show at the theatre until Saturday 11 March.