Cuts and Additions
When the production moved from the Theatre Royal in York to the Edinburgh Fringe, time constraints forced the director, Chris Bush, to make several cuts from the original script. Songs that were cut included:
- Tony's Theme, a simple rock piece in which Tony, instead of giving a speech to the adoring crowds, is encouraged by his colleagues to sing a song for them. With guitar in hand, he introduces his "average-Joe-public-school-boy" character and his ambitions as a youthful, people's prime minister. The song features soon after "Tony's Entrance," before the scene between Tony and the ghost of Princess Diana.
- War! a song about the Iraq War in which George W. Bush cheerily fires up Tony and sings optimistically about the situation in Iraq, while a trio of war-weary soldiers alternate between chants of "war!" and mournful laments about their dire circumstances. The loss of this song caused the Iraq element of Tony Blair's premiership to be almost entirely sidelined.
However, when the production was transferred to the Pleasance Theatre in Islington from 19–22 September 2007, the above songs were re-included. In addition, Bush and McCluskey added another song, "I Did It For Tony," a jazzy number in which Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson argue over each other's rightful place as Tony's true henchman, and Campbell bullies Mandelson about his homosexuality. The song features after "I Am Evita Peron," immediately before Mandelson's dismissal. When the show returned to the 2008 Edinburgh festival, the cuts and "I Did It For Tony" were retained.
Read more about this topic: TONY! The Blair Musical
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