English Kings Killing Foreigners review – witty provocation with a clean slate ending
Nothing sets the mood for an evening at Soho Theatre quite like a whiteboard demanding audience input. “English — Killing — …” reads the first prompt, as if Cards Against Humanity had been rebranded by the Home Office. Suggestions fly, some sharp, some silly, and the evening begins with the audience implicated. By the end, the board is wiped to four empty lines. “Any ideas?” Nina Bowers asks, marker pen poised. A clean slate – or perhaps just the most ominous to-do list in town.
Devised and performed by Bowers and Philip Arditti, English Kings Killing Foreigners ricochets between clownish silliness and darker undertones. They first met rehearsing Henry V at the Globe, a play whose martial speeches and flag-waving have long been pressed into service as a rallying cry for Englishness. Here, they restage that experience in a stripped-back black box, wearing white shirts and black trousers, breaking the fourth wall with relish. Early on, the audience is asked to vote on who should be king and who the outsider — suddenly we are the casting directors. Nina gets the nod to try on the crown. But the sting comes later, when Arditti halts mid-scene to plead his case: “I noticed you didn’t vote for me – now you’ve seen me act a bit, how can I improve if I were to play a king?” It is both comic and excruciating, an audition no one signed up for.
The premise is simple enough: two actors, late for rehearsal, find themselves locked out of the theatre. Then news filters through that the “national treasure” star inside has died. A reshuffle follows, and Bowers is bumped from anonymous spear-carrier to the throne itself. What begins as camaraderie between the pair curdles into rivalry. He, the RADA-trained Shakespeare devotee; she, a Black actor of St Lucian heritage, sceptical of the Bard and all too aware of what it means to be asked to stand in as England’s king. Shakespeare might have said “all the world’s a stage,” but he forgot to add that some of us are stuck forever as Spear-Carrier No. 3.
Much of the humour comes from their props and parodies. Arditti rifles through a bag producing medical kit, a cuddly toy, a grenade, an electric saw — a grab-bag of the stereotypes he’s so often cast to play.He parades his drama-school diction and at one point luxuriates in a pompous “Kenneth Brannaaaagh,” a syllabic send-up of Shakespearean reverence.
By contrast, Bowers speaks of her ‘stretching zone,’ the place beyond comfort where art – and risk – happen. It is a serious admission: a recognition that to claim Henry’s crown as her own, she must step knowingly into a space where rejection and hostility are always possible. On stage, that risk takes form in a St George’s flag hung outside the theatre, a reminder that some will not want to see her as king. She voices the suspicion that she has been cast less for her talent than for her optics, that she is there to attract attention while her more experienced co-star is overlooked. The thought recalls what she has written elsewhere: how Juliet, meant to be a dream role, can become a nightmare for a Black actress — the scrutiny, the abuse, the endless question of whether she ‘fits’. Here, too, Henry V is double-edged: a chance to wear England’s crown, but also a trap baited with accusations of tokenism. That tension comes to a head over Union Jack mugs of tea at the funeral of their director, when Arditti — in a knee-jerk spasm of disbelief — accidentally flings scalding patriotism straight into her face upon learning she has landed the role without auditioning. Nothing in this play skewers Britishness quite so neatly as hot tea weaponised in a moment of mourning.
Director Martin’s imagined Henry V is relocated to a kebab shop decorated with St George’s flags. For Arditti, the Bard is an inheritance to be mastered. For Bowers, the flag carries an unease – is it simply patriotism, or something more loaded? Demonstrations have put it back on the streets in recent years; for some it signals pride, for others alarm. On stage, the red cross becomes mood lighting – cheerfully patriotic for some, a hazard sign for others.
Though it is Bowers who ultimately dons the crown, Arditti approaches Henry from the margins — as Chorus, as would-be successor, as coach. Urged by her to stop treating patriotism as an abstract exercise, he begins to speak about Henry in relation to his own story. Born in Istanbul to a Jewish family, he recalls being told at RADA that his accent would never fit Shakespeare. Framed this way, the play asks whether a Jewish king could exist in a Muslim country, or a Turkish king in Israel. It also touches on the origins of St George — England’s patron saint, thought to have been born in Cappadocia and martyred in Palestine. From there the performance opens into the present, with both actors sharing their viewpoint on Palestine. It’s a one-sided intervention, but one that underscores how Shakespeare’s texts now spill into modern debates: once propaganda for English kings, his words read today as a litmus test for politics, nationalism, and belonging.
By the finale, Bowers has claimed the crown in helmet and body armour, delivering Henry’s words with a new edge, while Arditti, apron-clad in his kebab shop, turns from player to protester — trying to set fire to the St George’s flag. Where she leans into performance, he leans into activism, and the gap between them widens.
A gun is raised, very safely, to his co-star’s head; the choice, unsettlingly, is left hanging. Then the whiteboard is scrubbed down to those four blank lines. “Any ideas?” Bowers repeats. The play ends not with a speech but with a void – a crossword clue for Englishness, open to anything from a fury-inducing headline to something genuinely uniting.
What makes Bowers and Arditti’s piece memorable is not its provocation alone, but the way it folds laughter and unease into one another. As a foreigner watching a play titled English Kings Killing Foreigners, I couldn’t miss the irony. Shakespeare once supplied England with its myths of kings and victory; today his language is a prism through which identity politics and nationalism refract. Four hundred years later, he’s still on the front line.
★★★★☆ – Shakespear dismanteld with humour and heat
Photos by Harry Elletson.
ENGLISH KINGS KILLING FOREIGNERS
Venue: Soho Theatre, Dean Street, London W1
Dates: Tuesday 16th September – Saturday 18th October 2025
Press Nights: Monday 22nd and Tuesday 23rd September 2025
Time: 6.45 pm [3pm Matinee performances on Saturdays]
Running time: 70 mins
Tickets: https://sohotheatre.com/events/english-kings-killing-foreigners/
Elena Leo is the Arts & Lifestyle Editor of Ikon London Magazine.
