The Muppets have announced their first ever live shows in the UK, to take place at the O2 Arena, London, in July.
Kermit the Frog said fans could expect “music, comedy, incredible surprises, plus total and complete chaos”. Meanwhile, Miss Piggy said: “I can’t wait to be there to entertain, astonish, dazzle and otherwise gobsmack all moi’s fabulous fans! Wear socks, sweetie, cause I’m gonna knock ‘em off. I will amaze everyone with this first-ever live performance.” She added that the O2 Arena would be renamed the Moi 2 Arena.
The madcap menagerie of puppets, formed in 1955 under the stewardship of Jim Henson, achieved their greatest fame in the 70s with the TV series The Muppet Show. Six successful feature films followed, before a hiatus that began in 1999. The troupe returned for the reboot movie The Muppets in 2011, which won an Oscar for best song, and then again for Muppets Most Wanted in 2014. More recently there was an ill-starred TV mockumentary series, The Muppets, cancelled in 2016 after one season.
Until last year, though, the felt friends had never performed live. Their first concerts took place at the Hollywood Bowl in September, and featured cover versions of Queen and David Bowie tracks by the house band Dr Teeth and the Electric Mayhem; Miss Piggy performing Adele’s Hello; and spoofs of The Walking Dead (“The Walking Bread”, featuring the Swedish Chef) and Keeping Up With the Kardashians (“Keeping Up With the Crustaceans”, featuring Pepe the King Prawn).
The Muppets have regularly visited London on film before, trawling Dickensian London for The Muppet Christmas Carol, and vying with a villainous Ricky Gervais in Muppets Most Wanted, which features a heist scene at the Tower of London.
As well as the failed TV series, there was another rocky patch for the puppets recently when Steve Whitmire, the longtime puppeteer for Kermit the Frog, was fired in July 2017 for “unacceptable business conduct”. Whitmire alluded to conflict with Disney, who bought the rights to the Muppets in 2004, speaking of the company’s “limitations with respect to how well they know the Muppets”.
