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The Traitors Prom, Royal Albert Hall, review: tremendous treacherous fun with Claudia Winkleman

The Traitors Prom, Royal Albert Hall, review: tremendous treacherous fun with Claudia Winkleman

Telegraph27-07-2025
Saggy scarecrows and clowns in blue boiler suits terrorised the aisles. Cloaked figures paraded with lanterns aloft. A funeral cortège processed slowly through the crowd. No, this wasn't a fancy dress fever dream. It was Claudia Winkleman and pals hosting the first of two Traitors-themed Proms in the Royal Albert Hall.
You can see why the BBC is doing this. The Traitors is one of the corporation's biggest television shows. Three series in, the castle-based reality show – which sees 25 or so contestants split into Faithfuls and Traitors, with each person trying to figure out who is which, while the Traitors 'murder' people – has delighted viewers and won Baftas. Whether it's the Highland setting, the participants' backstabbing, the owls and Gothic allusions, the fiendish team tasks or Winkleman's warm presenting style, the Cluedo-meets-Big Brother programme has become a phenomenon. A 'celebrity' version, featuring the likes of Stephen Fry and Alan Carr, airs in the Autumn. In technical terms, the Beeb are leveraging their IP for all it's worth. And why not? After recent events, they're hardly going to put on a MasterChef Prom are they?
This matinee (there's another performance this evening) was billed as a 'spine-tingling celebration of musical treachery' featuring the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Chorus and the BBC Singers and soloists. All the music was either in the show or inspired by it. So while we were treated to Sam Watts' stirring Traitors theme and a song called Nothing Is As It Seems that was used in the first ever episode, we also had – more tenuously – Olivia Rodrigo's Vampire (because vampires are spooky), Britney Spears' Toxic (because that's what Traitors are) and Pete Tong and Rob Dough's Clubbed to Death, which must have mistakenly found its way onto the programme from the Squid Games Prom.
Interwoven within the music were the aforementioned creepy actors and Winkleman playing a loose version of the game with the audience. There was even a curiously underused replica of the show's round table in the middle of the auditorium floor. Winkleman triumphed with her usual deadpan humour, at one point telling us that already murdered were three members of the choir, various musicians, a family of five and 'a steward called Billy'. Some of the audience even wore their own capes.
Four former contestants also made an appearance: Alexander Dragonetti, Linda Rands and Minah Shannon from series three. There was also a big reveal of a fourth, much-loved Traitor. I'd tell you who it was but I'd get murdered too. None of them got involved with the music, which was unfortunate because Rands – whose, 'Ooooh what have we just done?' face to fellow Traitors in the show's Traitors' Turret has become a meme and a Valentine's card – revealed she'd once been in the Netherlands' equivalent of the BBC Singers.
Musically-speaking, Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem, O Fortuna from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana and Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre were particularly fine, as was E Lucevan le Stelle from Tosca. There was also some fantastic bagpipe playing.
Did this all hang together? Like those saggy scarecrows, sort of. But it didn't matter as it was tremendous fun (even the talking Victorian dolls). And the music was sublime.
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