Monty Norman and Peter Nichol's Olivier award winning musical is a wickedly entertaining satire of Victorian values and exposes the hypocrisy racism drug dealing money worship and sexual repression of the time through its favourite entertainment form. Dick his man Jack Sally Forth the Principal Girl Dame Dodo Randy the pantomime horse a flying ballet a transformation scene and even the traditional song-sheet are all brought on to tell the serious and finally devasting story of the single most profitable crop of the British East India Company Opium.
Poppy a pantomime parody which explores British imperialism and the nineteenth-century opium wars was first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company inWWWW 1982. It won the SWET award for Musical of the Year and was later re-mounted at the Adelphi. InWWWW 1988 the show was revived in a new version at the Half Moon Theatre and that is the text available here
