The Choir of Man review - raise your glass to this part musical part concert
This West End show with beer on tap has one great tune after another, says our reviewer.
Image credit: Mark Douet
This West End show with beer on tap has one great tune after another, says our reviewer.
Figures vary but it's said that more than 2,000 pubs across England and Wales have closed since the pandemic, including 300 last year alone, and more closures are forecast at a rate of around six a week in 2025.
Thank goodness, then, for the reopening of The Choir of Man – a West End institution, about pubs and set in one, that was itself facing closure at the end of 2024 after three years at the Arts Theatre.
But you can't keep a good show about downing pints down for long, and now it's back to raise a glass to a great British pastime.
Part musical and part concert, the show is set in a spit-and-sawdust establishment called The Jungle which has seen better days in terms of its decor but continues to host great nights for the bunch of blokes who gather there for a rowdy singsong, interspersed with a bit of poetry to fill in the true-life backstories of the performers who play them.
There’s no shifting scenery, no fancy lighting, no big dramatic reveals and indeed no plot to speak off. But it has one great tune after another and the nine-strong cast who deliver them are amazing, stomping their feet and singing up a storm. They also play instruments, backed by a four-piece band on a platform at the back.
They're cast as archetypes, from the Poet (Paul McArthur), the Bore (David Booth) and the Hardman (Bradley Walwyn) to the Joker (Benji Lord), the Romantic (Jason Brock) and the Handyman (George Knapper).
Ifan Gwilym-Jones is especially engaging as the piano-playing Maestro who turns The Proclaimers’ I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) into a classical piece, Oliver Jacobson’s cockney Barman has great fun with Escape (The Pina Colada Song), and Rob Godfrey’s long-haired Beast shows a tender side as he serenades an audience member with Teenage Dream.
The harmonies are extraordinary, the song choices eclectic (one minute you get Luther Vandross’s beautiful Dance With my Father, the next it’s Queen’s rousing Somebody to Love) and there's a brilliant bit of choreography when the drum beat on Paul Simon’s 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover is done as a tap dance.
You can buy a drink on stage from the fully-working bar before the performance starts and the cast hand out free pints and crisps at various points during a 90-minute show which, since debuting at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017, has taken on extra resonance.
At one point the Poet talks passionately about why pubs are life-enhancing communal spaces that are vital for our mental health.
As someone who has a fantastic local in Croydon's Bedford Tavern, I'll drink to that.
The Choir of Man is at the Arts Theatre, London.
Saga has teamed up with London Theatre Direct to offer you tickets to The Choir of Man and other shows at the best prices.
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