CHOIR

Minerva Theatre

★★½

“has warmth and energy but is held back by its uneven tone and sketchy characterisation”

Community, chaos and catchy tunes collide in Choir, though not always in harmony. Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s new comedy with music, directed by Hannah Joss, aims to be a feel-good celebration of connection and belonging but delivers an uneven evening populated by characters who often feel one-dimensional and overly caricatured.

At the centre is Morgan (Laura Checkley), who runs a small-town community choir in a pub’s upstairs room. They meet weekly to rehearse pop songs, drink and find space to be versions of themselves beyond their regular lives. The play follows the week leading up to a fundraising gig, which takes an unexpected turn when a TV producer offers the choir a chance to perform on national television, an opportunity Morgan seizes to put them on the map.

Morgan’s own description of her singers as having “seven different personalities” is telling. Everyone is different, with lives beyond the choir: Paul (James Gillan), a former West End performer now reduced to local radio voiceovers; Anna (Danusia Samal), whose composed exterior masks private struggles; Ken (Timothy Speyer), a sunny optimist despite a track record of underachievement; Esther (Danielle Henry) and Joy (Alison Fitzjohn), “best friends” whose relationship thrives on constant point-scoring; and Sheila (Annie Wensak), a compulsive liar whose fabrications are delivered with unapologetic flair. Late to the mix is Freddie (Keenan Munn-Francis), the young talent they’re fundraising for, whose arrival shifts the dynamic and unsettles the group. In theory, this variety could be a strength; in practice, the characters remain underdeveloped and the personal revelations feel more engineered than earned.

The show alternates between rehearsal scenes, where the singing is deliberately off-key or hesitant (well executed as such) and fantasy sequences where the choir sounds polished and professional. This framing device gives the performers the chance to shine vocally: Gillan’s soaring rendition of Queen’s Somebody to Love, Samal’s smoky take on Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black and Munn-Francis’s heartfelt Nothing Compares 2 U are standout moments.

Alison Fitzjohn and Annie Wensak share most of the comic thunder, though in very different styles – Fitzjohn with dry, deadpan barbs and Wensak delivering audacious one-liners and scene-stealing entrances. Danielle Henry as Esther adds a quieter, sharper presence, blending vulnerability with subtle tension in her friendship with Joy. Laura Checkley’s Morgan, while central, feels somewhat one-note, limiting the character’s emotional arc. Though the cast’s comic timing is strong, performances often lean toward broad stereotypes rather than nuance. Speyer (Ken), Gillan (Paul) and Munn-Francis (Freddie) carry the most sustained emotional beats, but the delivery often follows the rhythm of scripted dialogue rather than the natural ebb and flow of genuine conversation, a reflection of Bhatti’s script, which hints at something more meaningful but too often resorts to easy laughs and predictable plot turns. Joss, in her directorial debut, maintains pace but doesn’t fully bridge these divides or allow character arcs to develop.

Designer Anisha Fields’ pub function room set is exactly what you’d expect, transforming into a neon-lit diva stage for the fantasy sequences – a shift echoed by Jai Morjaria’s lighting moving from pub warmth to spotlight glamour. Fields also designs the costumes, which convincingly reflect the characters’ personalities and add an extra layer of texture and comedy to the production. Alexandra Faye Braithwaite’s sound design and Rich Forbes’ arrangements, supported by Musical Director Michael Henry, inject vitality into the music. These pop moments lift the atmosphere, suggesting what Choir might achieve if the writing matched its musical flair.

Choir has warmth and energy but is held back by its uneven tone and sketchy characterisation. The cast brings commitment and charm, hinting at stories the script never fully explores. Ultimately, it feels like a choir warming up – full of promise, but not yet in harmony.

CHOIR

Minerva Theatre

Reviewed on 8th August 2025

by Ellen Cheshire

Photography by Helen Murray

Previous Chichester Festival reviews:

TOP HAT | ★★★★ | July 2025

THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR | ★★★★ | May 2025

REDLANDS | ★★★★ | September 2024

CHOIR

ANIMAL FARM

Stratford East

★★★★

“some truly striking moments of grand theatricality”

First things first, there is no farm. Not one that we would recognise anyway. Not the solace of a green field or a puffy cloud against an azure sky. This Animal Farm is a factory farm. A gutter scythes through the stage running red with the blood of slaughtered animals.

In director Amy Leach’s powerful and visually stunning interpretation of the George Orwell novella, the world is a succession of wire cages. These animals’ lives are bloody, mucky and constrained.

Set and costume designer Hayley Grindle dresses the animals in smeared vests and boiler suits, their designation (Sheep, Dog etc) tattooed or worn as patches – and where have we seen that before?

Old Major (Everal A Walsh) warns his friends they are sleepwalking towards their own destruction. He too is carried off to the abattoir but his final cry for rebellion finds purchase and revolution follows.

In many of the beautifully worked set pieces – brutal, sinewy ballets – the look and feel is that of a Kraftwerk gig, all soulless electronica, wire and concrete picked out in red and white with starkly lit bodies as silhouettes in strobe-like slow motion.

It is against this backdrop of warehouse columns and ominous shadows that the menagerie fights for scraps of dignity, putting the agro into agro-industrial complex.

“Hambush!’ coos gossipy pigeon and part-time narrator Milo (Em Prendergast), who adds necessary comic relief to a relentlessly grim tale.

Snowball (Robin Morrissey) and Napoleon (Tachia Newall) square off in a battle of ideals. Sneaky little Squealer (Tom Simper) sows the seeds of distrust and watches his manipulations infect the mind of bombastic Napoleon who succumbs to paranoia and corruption.

Tatty Hennessy’s muscular adaptation – accessible through seamless British Sign Language – is never less than ambitious in its manifesto and purpose.

A banner reads “All animals are created equal.” Over the course of two hours the declaration becomes first an ideal, then a plan, then a provocation, then an anathema and finally a fig leaf to justify oppression. Some animals are more equal than others, Orwell reminds us.

Caught up in the crossfire is a vibrant selection of characters each given their own personalities mercifully free of nursery rhyme cliché. Clover (Tianah Hodding) is frustratingly naïve, Boxer (Gabriel Paul) hard working, Minty (Farshid Rokey) malleable, Clara (Brydie Service) maternal, Blue (Joshua-Alexander Williams) vicious and so on.

It is a truism that Orwell’s response to the Soviet Union is perennially relevant, even in its 80th anniversary year (which accounts for a high crop yield of productions recently). As a result, there is an occasional over-elaboration of message infecting a script which, otherwise, demonstrates effectively how division is a design flaw of the human soul.

There is another box, which sits above the stage, drenched in luxury. First the greedy farmers look down on the animals and then the animals look down on the lesser animals, watching them writhe in their own muck, this time out of deluded sense of community and joint endeavour.

Inevitably, characters become less distinctive as the end nears but the impressive cast holds out for as long as it can before surrendering to the needs of allegory.

Meanwhile, in this committed and sure-footed production, the slow descent into bleakness is marked out by some truly striking moments of grand theatricality.

Tag Archives: Jai Morjaria

CHOIR

★★½

Minerva Theatre

CHOIR

Minerva Theatre

★★½

“has warmth and energy but is held back by its uneven tone and sketchy characterisation”