one4review | On 21, Aug 2026

The Meeples, the world’s most famous puppets (who are all a little bit familiar) have, after

having been hounded from TV, are holding the raunchiest, loudest and filthiest show they

can at an underground cabaret club where anything goes. But the arrival of their old

leader, plus the threat of an oncoming raid by ICE, is going to lead to all manner of chaos

including, possibly, a murder or two.

Combining wafer-thinly veiled parodies of various major Muppets, such as Sherbert the

Frog and Missy LePig, with songs and dance and a pitch-black comic plot, The Meeples:

XXX really did feel like a smoky cabaret dungeon in Weimar Berlin, with the cast in a

combination of fetish gear and lingerie. Only, filled with swearing puppets. And, with the

turn to the right that America has been experiencing for the last decade, that feels

explicitly intentional.

Taking something family friendly to its adult extremes is always a popular formula for

comedy, and it’s usually pretty successful. Fortunately, while that may be the starting

point for this show, it’s not the only gag up its sleeve. With riotous musical numbers and a

various lewd and comic interactions between the (almost entirely reprehensible)

characters, both felt and flesh, this show would stand on its own without the puppets but

is made funnier because of them, as it should be.

The musical numbers are well-performed ensemble pieces, with good choreography,

though I was at first a little confused that they seemed only tangentially related to the

plot, which is probably more on me for thinking of this more as a musical than a cabaret,

though I found it a little odd that the playbill available only listed the music as by “Multiple

Artists” rather than listing the actual sources and it was only because I recognised the final

track which had gone viral on social media a few times I realised that the songs weren’t

original compositions.

It’s not a happy show, but an angry one and there’s more than a little punk in the way the

characters are deciding to wallow and frolic in the filth they’ve been reduced to. The

ending of the show is equally nihilistic, concluding that violence is the only response to

oppression and that moral grimness might perhaps put off a punter who just wanted to

see some puppets make jokes about sex toys. This show didn’t speak to me directly, but it

wasn’t written for me, it was written for people on the fringes of “acceptable” society who

feel the net drawing closer. That probably makes this a bit of a marmite show, but then

aren’t all the best ones?

****
Reviewed by Tom

21:55

7th-29th (not Sun-Mon)

Lime Studio at Greenside @ George Street