Review: The Choir of Man at Richmond Theatre — A Joyful Crowd-Pleaser
A brilliantly performed revue of songs, comedy and audience participation, with the bones of a full musical underneath.
Have you ever been to a karaoke club where everyone sounds like screeching tyres, or a pub where the principal dance move is left foot, right foot, cardboard box? The Choir of Man is nothing like that. This is an English pub as it exists in memory: beer, banter, blokes, music — only with considerably better singing and choreography.
The Jungle, the pub on stage, is already open when you arrive. People are drinking, chatting, wandering about. The cast are among the audience as if they have been there all afternoon. Some spectators are invited onto the stage before the show has properly begun. By the time the bell goes, you have already been recruited. In breaking the fourth wall, The Choir of Man has nearly shattered the other three from the get-go.
And it keeps going, with pints arriving in the stalls, audience members being serenaded, people hauled on stage to dance and packets of crisps flying through the air. The cast wandering into the audience asking who wants a drink (thank you for my pint, Jack Skelton) is not participation bolted onto a show; it is a rather clever part of the show. Just like in real life, a pub works because people occupy it together; so does a choir — you turn up, listen to other people, and sooner or later you join in.
There is no plot in the conventional musical-theatre sense, although saying there is no story rather undersells what is going on. The 90-minute show is built around 16 songs, ranging from Guns N’ Roses and Paul Simon to Adele, Queen and Sia, rearranged for nine performers who sing, dance and play instruments — with Gustav Melbardis particularly impressive on piano and Rob Godfrey on guitar. The songs, from “Welcome to the Jungle” all the way to “The Parting Glass”, provide the storyline.
The first half is largely an ode to the pub as refuge: somewhere to escape the cold, the outside world and whatever else is waiting on the doorstep. The nine men emerge as familiar pub types — The Beast (Rob Godfrey), The Barman (Joshua Lloyd), The Romantic (Sam Walter), The Handyman (Jack Skelton), The Maestro (Gustav Melbardis) and the rest — while The Poet (Oluwalonimi (Nimi) Owoyemi) stitches the evening together with spoken passages. In the second half, the attention turns more towards the men themselves: friendship, loneliness, love and the idea of home. It is a simple and effective progression, where the pub is the “where” and the people are the “why”.
The trouble is that the characters often seem as though they could be more interesting than there is time to explore. Adele’s “Hello”, for instance, hints at a life for The Romantic (Sam Walter) beyond the jokes and pints. Then, just as you start wondering who this man might actually be, along comes another song.
The Choir of Man has the bones of a full musical hiding inside a very successful music revue. It would be interesting to see what happened if it let those bones grow.
The Hard Man — Levi Tyrell Johnson. Photo: Mark Senior
For now, the music is more than enough compensation. Songs we have heard to death elsewhere are rearranged so thoroughly that they occasionally seem to have been waiting for this pub all along. Bohemian Rhapsody is the vocal showstopper, with the cast splitting its operatic passages into intricate a cappella layers, the basses rumbling while the higher tenors soar.
The dancing is every bit as energetic. Jack Skelton’s tap turns the floor into a percussion instrument, while the choreography makes full use of the bar, crates and every available inch of The Jungle. Credit, too, to the props department for those seemingly indestructible mugs that are smashed, thrown about and generally treated as disposable cups.
The comedy comes from punchlines, witty audience interactions and physical comedy, creating a fun, upbeat atmosphere. The physical comedy in Escape (The Piña Colada Song), with Joshua Lloyd as The Barman, is superb — the cast’s hips certainly don’t lie; Shakira could take notes. Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers creates one of the evening’s more risqué moments. The men stand in a row behind urinals, their middle sections conveniently hidden. One starts singing, another joins, then another, building the rhythm until the whole line is involved. Another part of the joke rests on a fundamental rule of male urinal etiquette: you do not look sideways. They do.
During I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles), the audience finally stops pretending to be an audience and becomes the 10th member of the cast. The room is divided into sections, and the cast lead a full-throated call-and-response, with everyone shouting their part back. I found myself wondering whether anyone had proposed during the song on this tour. If not, someone ought to try it. The success rate could be considerable.
The evening’s communal idea reaches its largest scale before the final farewell. Sam Ebenezer — the Super Swing — introduces 182 members of local choirs, who join the cast for Sia’s “Chandelier”. The effect is extraordinary: so many voices finding the same harmony in one room, and suddenly the show’s romantic idea of the pub as communal refuge spreads into the whole theatre.
The finale, The Parting Glass, brings everyone together for one last hurrah. The evening began with strangers wandering into a pub and ends with a roomful of people singing together. The circle is complete.
Bringing strangers together in harmony may not quite be a miracle, but it comes close. Can the cast turn water into wine? Probably not. But give them a beer, a packet of crisps and a room of willing singers, and they can turn a pub into a theatre.
The verdict: ★★★★⯨ An outstanding crowd-pleaser, then: funny, exuberant and musically formidable, with enough genuine warmth beneath the beer and bravado to stop it becoming merely a very elaborate singalong.
The Choir of Man — Richmond Theatre
The Choir of Man plays at Richmond Theatre, The Green, Richmond, London, TW9 1QJ, from 25–29 August 2026, before continuing its UK and Ireland tour.
For tour dates and tickets, visit https://www.thechoirofmanukietour.com/ and https://www.atgtickets.com/shows/the-choir-of-man/
Elena Leo is the Culture & Lifestyle Editor of Ikon London Magazine.
