Reviews South East England

The Choir of Man

Yvonne DelahayeSeptember 2, 2026

What could be better than a night out at your local pub, watching live music with free beer and crisps thrown in for good measure? The Choir of Man brings all this to you in a live theatre environment, where the audience are encouraged to participate on the stage and become a part of the show.

The show was created by Nic Doodson and Andrew Kay in 2016, who thought up the idea of a group of normal men singing in their local pub’s choir. The show premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2017 in the Assembly Rooms and became an instant hit. The original show featured poetry slam champion Ben Norris, who developed a series of monologues to help transition between songs.

In 2018 the show was performed at the Adelaide Fringe, winning the BankSA ‘Best Music’ award and then the ‘Pick of the Fringe’ award. The Choir of Man had a run at the Playhouse Square, Cleveland in 2021, the first musical to perform in the US after the Covid-19 shutdown.

2021 also saw The Choir of Man making its West End debut at the Arts Theatre, where it received an Olivier Award nomination for Best Entertainment or Comedy Play in 2022.

The current cast of talented actor/musicians features Rob Godfrey, Joshua Lloyd, Ben Mabberley, Gustav Melbardis, Aaron Pottenger, Jack Skelton and Oluwalonimi Owoyemi as the poet.

Before the show starts, the actors are mingling with the audience encouraging them up on to the stage to receive a free drink. This creates an atmosphere of fun and laughter as the cast welcome everyone to ‘The Jungle’. There’s no storyline as such and the songs are all unconnected, from 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover to Hello, I Will Walk 500 Miles to Chandelier. Jack Skelton does a couple of nifty tap dance routines and the acapella harmonies are sublime.

Towards the end of the second Act, Chandelier is performed again accompanied by 137 voices from local choirs. Involving the local community choirs around the country certainly helps to fill the theatre!

Personally, I think that rather than have one person as ‘the poet’ talking about each character, they could all have their own monologues introducing themselves so we’d get to know them individually.

It’s an unusual show, but the audience loved being included, whooping and clapping throughout. The message we can take from this is that pubs are at the heart of our communities, where people can share their lives and have fun and it would be a tragedy if we ever lost that.

Reviewed by:

Yvonne Delahaye (X – @yvonnedelahaye)

1/9/26

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