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Petty Men (Susan Elkin reviews)

PETTY MEN review Arcola Theatre 19 Nov – 20 Dec 2025

Susan Elkin • 26 November 2025

‘Ingenious but esoteric’ ★★

Two actors are in a gloomy theatre dressing room. The show, which rumbles in the background via relay, is Julius Caesar. They are understudies to Brutus (John Chisham) and Cassius (Adam Goodbody). “ He [Caesar] doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus; and we petty men walk under his huge legs”.

These men are bored because there have been a hundred performances but neither has ever been on – a pretty unlikely situation in real theatrical life – so they find playful ways of amusing themselves. They are, however, so mired in Julius Caesar that conversation is often mingled with text from the play (all captioned) and they help each other with line learning so we hear a lot of Shakespeare. Thus it inches towards being the advertised “radical reworking” of Julius Caesar.

Then something happens on stage in the distance which changes everything and we see increasing tension between the understudies. A power cut adds to the drama. And don’t forget there’s a ghost scene in Julius Caesar. Petty Men is effectively a play within a play but the storytelling gets lost.

It’s an intriguing concept but it would fall pretty flat if you weren’t familiar with the plot and text of Julius Caesar. Moreover it loses plausibility on several counts. Two actors dissing the skills of their leading man amongst themselves would refer to their colleague as “Fred Blogs” not as “Caesar”. Moreover I’m pretty sure that no actor learns lines by randomly committing act, scene and line numbers to memory. Response to cues would be far more natural. And at the Petty Men press performance a chunk of dialogue was repeated and it was unclear whether this was deliberate (and if so, why?) or down to first night nerves.

This play seems to be trying to pose some interesting questions: Can actors change the world? If you commit to an acting career what are your expectations? What can Julius Caesar teach us in 2025? And more. Sadly none of them is fully explored.

And all of that is a pity because a great deal of work and thought has evidently gone into this show which certainly highlights the talents of two decent actors and their director.

Petty Men by John Chisham, Julia Levai & Adam Goodbody

Directed by Julia Levai

Presented by Buzz Studios

Arcola Theatre, Studio 2

Box Office https://www.arcolatheatre.com/event/pettymen/

Cast: John Chisham and Adam Goodbody

Direction by Júlia Levai; Set and Costume Design: Tomás Palmer; Lighting Design: Lucía Sánchez Roldán; Sound Design: Tingying Dong; Caption Design: Perri Schofield; Dramaturgy: Sofia Gallucci; Access Support: Megan Ekinsmyth; Creative Consultancy: Pinny Grylls; Technical Stage Management: Emily Darley

Produced by Tom Dixon (Buzz Studios)

Photo credits: Olivia Spencer

REVIEW FIRST PUBLISHED BY LONDON PUB THEATRES MAGAZINE

Red

Daver Carey, Ashley Driver & Sebastian Ross

Rayne Theatre, Chickenshed

 Star rating: 3.5

 

If you want a hip-hop folk story with all narrative expectations confounded then Chickenshed’s new show for Christmas 2025 ticks plenty of boxes. In this version of Red Riding Hood (yes, she does put one on eventually) Granny is a sort of mafiosa villainess and the wolf is a good guy, misunderstood of course. It also becomes a symbolic quest story because there are three amulets, in the possession of three different characters, which have to be found and united.

Like all Chickenshed shows it’s high octane fun with huge team-directed casts (five different juvenile rotas or casts – it was the 142-strong Blue Rota on press night) and its own, distinctive style of choreography. That means lots of lifts, leaps and leans and big actors picking up smaller ones to create architectural shapes. I’ve seen it there many times before but it still works effectively enough. What is different about this production is that most of the songs are rap style which means there isn’t a lot of choral repetition.

Blue Rota’s Maisie Packer as Red, (short for Mildred) has fine stage presence, oodles of stroppy insolence and, eventually enlightened wonder. There’s a good moment when she and Michael Bossise (who also co directs) as Wolf gaze at stars together and the lighting design (Andrew Caddies) works a bit of lump-in-the-throat magic.

The Chickenshed way of working is for talented adults in the cast to provide a framework so the inclusive theatre experience becomes richly immersive for all performers. Most of these adults are graduates of Chickenshed’s education programmes who now work for the company. Cara McInanny (who also co-directs with Bethany Hamlin and Jonny Morton) for example, is glitteringly commanding as Granny and her song “It’s Fun to Be Bad” is a almost a show stopper.

Then there’s the signing – another Chickenshed trademark. Every word spoken is simultaneously and integrally signed somewhere on stage. And when it’s a dialogue then that is replicated by a two signers. There are many signers in the company and in one of two of the ensemble numbers everyone does it at a simple level. Shiloh Maersk, whom I’ve seen in action in many Chickenshed shows, is exceptionally charismatic to watch because his movement work is so fluid that the signing and the dancing are all one. He has completed Chickenshed’s BA course and is now a mentor, performer and teacher there.

Inclusivity is Chickenshed’s raison d’être and in Red, as always, I admire the way that performers in need of support on stage get it with respectful subtlety. And as usual much of the dialogue, sung or spoken, is split amongst dozens of young performers who can be anywhere on the large stage. I can see why this is done but it often makes it difficult to work out who is singing or speaking before the moment is over and we’re on to something else – it’s a pretty busy show.

Usually at Chickenshed, the live band is hidden away so that we don’t see them. For this show part of it visibly on a platform above the back screen. It’s a massive youth band, directed by Phil Haines, and they make a terrific sound so that’s another feather in Chickenshed’s cap.

The story telling is bit weak in the first half but becomes clearer after the interval and some of the minor characters are superfluous although they’re well directed. In general, though, Red is the usual feel-good achievement we’ve come to expect from Chickenshed.

 

LA BELLA BIMBA! Review, Voila Festival at Barons Court Theatre 21 – 23 November 2025

Susan Elkin • 23 November 2025

‘Italian, clowning and cabaret’ ★★★

There is a lot of talent in this company whose show presents two Italian girls arriving in 1920s New York with Broadway ambitions. What they actually do is to busk outside theatre stage doors There’s no plot as such. They simply perform, argue, support each other, become elated when it goes well, cast down when it doesn’t –  and amuse the audience.

Because Carlotta (Lucrezia Galeone) and Cecilia (Sarah Silvestri)  don’t speak English we hear a great deal of high-octane Italian – and they’re clearly enjoying sending up the innate volubility of both the language and most of its native speakers. I know only “music” Italian mushed in with bits and pieces deduced over the years via French and Latin. Nonetheless Gelone and Silvestri ensure that most of what they say is comprehensible to the audience members like me and that’s quite a skill.

Working with three fine musicians on Baron Court’s tiny stage they sing – pretty well – in a range of styles including opera parody. It’s a good idea too to place them (director Molly Rolfe) between the MD on keys (Michele Maria Benvenuto) guitarist (Ben Howarth and percussionist (Tasha Fish) who sit like three points on a triangle. It ensures that the musicians can see each other very clearly so the music is punctiliously precise and when the trio become part of the action it’s seamless.

La Bella Bimba! is a 60 minute  show which is good fun and quite original but it is, by definition, small scale and fringe so it’s hard to see where its future might lie.

LA BELLA BIMBA! by Theatre Gamine

Lucrezia Galeone and Virginia Ruspini

Barons Court Theatre, part of the Voila Festival

Cast & Creatives

Director: Molly Rolfe

Producer: Elena Rigoni

Co-composer and performer: Lucrezia Galeone

Sarah Silvestri: Performer

Ben Barrow: Co-composer

The photographer credit is Isadora Baccon – @bacconfilms

REVIEW FIRST PUBLISHED BY LONDON PUB THEATRES MAGAZINE

Review: JACK AND THE BEANSTALK at Lyric Hammersmith 15 Nov 2025 – 4 Jan 2026

Susan Elkin • 23 November 2025

‘Original, thoughtful and mildly traditional’ ★★★ ½    

This hip-hop pantomime is genuinely different. Sonia Jalay tells a strong story predicated on the importance of imagination, a quality we all have in our heads but it’s vulnerable. And although most of the traditional elements (slosh scene, sing along, children on stage, calling out, two person cow)  are in, there aren’t many puns or tedious one liners. And it’s bespoke for Hammersmith. There’s a distinct, and very welcome, freshness here.

Jack Trott (Joey James), dressed in school uniform, is about to start at the Fleshcreep Academy where his sister Jill (Sienna Widd) is already established and his mother (Sam Harrison) is a dinner lady. The school is Dickensian with headteacher, Sir Fleshcreep MBE (John Partridge) coming somewhere between Mr Creakle and Miss Trunchbull as he menaces the children and their imaginations into submission. He looks and sounds like Nigel Farage too. The worst punishment is being “sent to the giant” Then in the second half, when we arrive in the giant’s kingdom, we’re effectively inside Fleshcreep’s head and it isn’t pretty.

The show opens with the terrifically talented Jade Hackett as Fairy Godfather. She sports a delicious Caribbean accent, moves like rubber, commands the stage and looks hilarious cuddling up to her love interest, Mama Trott, who is at least 18 inches taller. Sam Harrison, with all the requisite outrageous costumes (designed by Georgia Lowe) finds the right blend of camp, kindness and pathos in his take on the Dame.

Joey James also excels as the very nervous Jack gradually finding the confidence not to depend on his alter ego sock puppet and Sienna Widd’s Jill is delightful as the feisty elder sister – a very far cry from the usual “Silly Billy” brother whipping up the audience into forming gangs. And it’s all supported with some very pleasing ensemble work.

In many ways, though, this show belongs to John Partridge who cackles so unpleasantly that he really is foul rather than funny as he lords it over everyone – every word spat out with relish and spiced with some engaging body movement. Why am I not surprised to read that he trained as a dancer, initially at the royal ballet school?

The second half of this show is surprisingly dark – shades of both His Dark Materials and the Wizard of Oz. Being “sent to the giant,” as Jill has been, is seriously sinister but no spoilers.  Suffice it to say that it makes a subtle but very pertinent political point about education and what, at its worst, it does to young people.

It’s fortunate that most of the songs (Corin Buckridge) are rap because the words are inclined to disappear in the more pop-style numbers, partly because the music – well played by a four piece band led by Olivia Zacharia –  is often too loud.

For myself I really liked this reworking of the panto genre but I suspect it might not do for families looking for the sort of light-hearted seasonal romp they’re used to. The children around me were engaged and willing to yell when required but there wasn’t all that much laughter.

JACK AND THE BEANSTALK at Lyric Hammersmith

Written by Sonia Jalay

Directed by Nicholai La Barrie

BOX OFFICE https://lyric.co.uk/shows/jack-and-the-beanstalk-2025/

Photography: Manuel Harlan

REVIEW FIRST PUBLISHED BY LONDON PUB THEATRES MAGAZINE

Jeremy Vine’s is not a name I had, until now, associated with novels. Neither had the surprised friend who drew my attention to The Diver and the Lover (2020). She didn’t  offer any kind of verdict – just said she’d be interested to know what I thought of it. So here goes.

Salvador Dali’s famous, startling 1951 crucifixion painting, Christ of Saint John of the Cross hangs in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery amd Museum in Glasgow. American stuntman Russell Saunders modelled for it, suspended from a gantry. The painting was bought from the artist  by Dr Tom Honeyman for Glasgow for £8,200.

That is Vine’s starting point for a rather arresting historical novel full of time shifts. It’s a novel inspired by art ( a sub genre?)  like Tracey Chevalier’s Girl With a Pearl Earring or Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy although Vine’s is a quite different approach from either of those.

Two (fictional) half-sisters, a fifteen year age gap between them are at Port Lligat in Spain where Dali is living. It is 1951. The elder, Meredith, has mental health issues, because of a tragically traumatised childhood, and you soon begin to wonder if she is involved in Vine’s framing device. The novel starts at Kelvingrove in the present where a gallery employee sees an elderly woman apparently trying to damage the painting and it ends with the outcome of that incident.

Back in 1951 Meredith, who loves art, wants to meet Dali. In their hotel is an attractive young man named Adam Bannerman whose build is similar to Russell Saunders – who is also around. Bannerman is a diver and the younger sister Ginny sees him dive naked off the cliffs one morning and it’s the beginning of something for them both although Vine keeps us wondering for a long time.

Eventually – it’s a bit drawn out – they do get into the house where Dali works and lives with Gala, who seems to be a wife cum housekeeper cum protective PA cum (probably) cover for his gay proclivities. The point is, eventually, which of the two men actually modelled for the painting? And there’s fraught political tension beneath everything that goes on because this is Franco’s Spain in which people the regime don’t like are summarily despatched by armed police. Vine builds in a lot of suspense, particularly when Bannerman is left alone in great danger in Dali’s deserted villa.

Vine is rather good at evoking the climate and ambience of Port Lligat and the descriptions of Dali’s surreal, eccentric home (swimming pool shaped like phallus and testicles) are fun and, presumably researched. It’s also an ingenious plot which made me call up images of the painting several times. And thank you, Jeremy Vine, for a satisfying ending. They’re too rare.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Boundless Deep by Richard Holmes

Big Cranberry – Jack Studio Theatre, London

Reviewer: Susan Elkin
The Reviews Hub - LondonBy 

Photo by Sosij Productions.

Writer and Director: Joe Edgar  

Four journalists meet on a Friday evening in the office of the Boston Globe, where they work. Marianne is reading aloud her work-in-progress, at length, to her editor Gloria and her colleagues Jennifer (Sydney Crocker) and Karl (Xavier Starr). It’s effectively a critique session.

The article she’s working on is about cranberry farming in the south of Massachusetts, with allegations that, because there is no longer any money in cranberries, farmers are using it as a cover for illegally mining sand and selling it to the building industry. The play, which runs 75 minutes without interval, is initially far too wordy and dull but gradually perks up with flashbacks into Marianne’s interviews, the beginning of a relationship with one of her interviewees, discussions with her therapist and eventually her loss of impartiality. The last 15 minutes of the play, when she and Gloria have a furious row about the function of journalism, are the most arresting.

Molly Hanly is excellent as Marianne: variously troubled, determined, confused, worried and eager to please. It’s a well-nuanced take on a big role. And there’s a powerful performance from Julia Welch, who gets all the sympathetic authority of an older editor just right. She has a distinct look of conductor Marin Alsop about her and uses a similar accent, which somehow stresses that she is unequivocally in charge of this office. Then she’s fun in a much smaller role as a forthright Mom on a cranberry farm who never stops cleaning.

This play is presented on the simplest possible set (no designer credited), consisting primarily of a coat rack, two office tables and two chairs. Joe Edgar and his cast make imaginative use of the tables, which are sometimes pushed to the sides. In one scene, they become a car, driven by Hanly with Crocker and Welch pushing it round bends on cue. The tables briefly serve as a bed, too.

It’s an interesting idea for a play, touching as it does on climate change, the nature of truth and professionalism in the media, along with other contentious and topical issues. There is, however, too little action to make really satisfactory drama, and it often feels flat.

Runs until 29 November 2025

Star rating: 2.5

Fantasia Orchestra

Tom Fetherstonhaugh

Elizabeth Watts

Smith Square Hall, 23 November 2025

 

Subtitled “Birdsong,” this miscellany concert was loosely predicated on avian inspiration across several centuries. And, considering that soprano Elizabeth Watts was dep-ing for the indisposed Lucy Crowe at less than 24 hours notice, it was remarkably slick. Of course there were one or two changes to the original programme but on the whole it ran as advertised with plenty of youthful freshness from Tom Fetherstonhaugh (still only 26) and the orchestra he founded in 2016.

Messiaen was inevitably in the mix. You could hardly have a bird-themed concert without him. His The Lovebird of the Star from Harawi (1946), arranged by Harry Baker is a richly textural piece in which, performed here without voice, we could really hear and enjoy Jaymee Coonjobeeharry’s birdlike piccolo interjections over lush orchestral chords. Then, Coonjobeeharry moved to the front of the stage with his flute to duet with Watts in Handel’s “Sweet Bird”. I loved the  warm way she looked at him, smilingly. It almost convinced me that she, and we, really could hear a delightful bird.

Dove Sono from The Marriage of Figaro happens to be my favourite aria from any Mozart Opera and Watts more than did it justice. Her rendering was nuanced and full of dramatic passion and rubato and I admired her elegant attention to the decoration in the recap. She also gave us a moving and engaging account of Spring from Strauss’s Four Last Songs along with several other numbers ending, as her encore, with the crowd-pleasing A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square with Braimah Kanneh-Mason creating the nightingale on violin. Kanneh-Mason had opened the concert with Spring from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, decently enough performed.

Many composers have very effectively evoked the sea in their music: Mendelssohn, Debussy and Britten to name but three. This concert gave us the London premiere of Blasio Kavuma’s I am the Sea, commissioned by Fantasia for a festival earlier this year. It’s effectively a mini concerto for two violins, viola and oboe. Full of moody, mysteriousness it culminates in bird-like horn grunts and string glissandi. Whether you would spot the marine and avian references without the title and programme note is doubtful.

The longest and most substantial piece is this concert was Haydn’s Symphony No 83 which came immediately after the interval. It was an enjoyable performance in which Fettherstonhaugh leaned so pointedly on the violin “clucking” in the opening movement that the audience chuckled palpably. Of course Haydn’s mind wasn’t really on poultry coops in 1785. The symphony’s nickname “The Hen” dates from the nineteenth century but it’s fun either way and I especially admired the orchestra’s account of the gloriously classical minuet and trio which they packed full of colour.

This pleasant concert was the first of four in Fantasia Orchestra’s new residency at Smith Square Hall. Its sparky personality counterpoints nicely with the grandiose Corinthian pillars.

Festen – Tower Theatre, London

Reviewer: Susan Elkin
The Reviews Hub - LondonBy 

Image by Marc Gascoigne (@mdgascoigne)

Writers: Thomas Vinterberg, Mogens Rukov and Bo Hr. Hansen adapted for the English stage by David Eldridge

Director: Allan Stronach

Festen, ironically subtitled and translated “the celebration”, depicts a wealthy Danish family gathering for the 60th birthday of its head, Helge. Nothing is as it seems, and there’s certainly no reason to celebrate anything.  We’re in the world of Strindberg, Ibsen and Chekhov with group dynamics, subtext and tensions bubbling. It feels like a play from a very different era, although, surprisingly, the film which David Eldridge has adapted dates from 1998.

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Joshua Picton is outstanding as Christian, the eldest of Helge’s four children. Initially urbane – although at first there’s fierce tension with his irascible younger brother Michael (Alexander Dalton) – he drops a revelatory bombshell in his birthday dinner speech, and the effect is devastating. His twin sister, Linda, has died by suicide for reasons which now become apparent.

And the later crazed, half-drunk scenes in which Picton’s character mistakes his young niece (Eloise McCreedy, who alternates with Millie Howard at other performances) for his much missed sister are as moving as they are disturbing. Meanwhile, he’s been having sex with Pia (Medea Manaz), one of his father’s staff, for some time, although she’s keener than he is. Those scenes are subtly strong, too.

Martin Shaw is pleasing as Helge as much as we come to loathe him, and there’s an enjoyable performance from David Lindley-Pilley, the deliciously camp servant who does his job efficiently while missing nothing and refusing to be put upon. And, as at every family gathering, there are the eccentric outliers: the dim, drunken uncle (Daniel Watson – nicely observed) and the grandfather with dementia (Andrew Robinson – perfect).

As always, though, the show rests on the skill of the director, and Allan Stonach is very good at deafening silence when every character is so astonished, overwhelmed or distressed that no one knows what to say – so they don’t. During, for example, the main course at dinner, nobody speaks for a while, and all you can hear is cutlery scraping on plates as the tension builds. The scenes in which the well-oiled dinner guests sing and cavort across the set in a sort of manic conga-style dance, pretending nothing is wrong, are effective too.

Angelika Michitsch’s triangular set supports the action neatly. She has a long screen (the dining room wall) across the right angle of Tower’s triangular playing space so that characters can emerge from either side or make a circuit as you might in a large country house through several rooms. Two wall cupboards are flipped over to become beds, and there’s an ingenious scene in which three couples are paralleled in three different bedrooms while all are in the same physical space.

Festen is a brave choice for a community theatre, but, as it almost always does,  Tower Theatre has risen ably to the challenge

Runs until 29 November 2025

The Reviews Hub Star Rating

3.5 stars

Danish, dark and disturbing