★★★★

“funny, sharp, and full of twists and turns”

Growing up in South London in the early 2000s, Brixton Academy already had legendary status. My first gig was there: racing to the front barrier with friends to get as close as possible to the stage. The electric anticipation of entering a music venue has an affinity with stepping into a theatre, and the staging of this production of Brixton Calling, with the neon newspaper clippings and autographs scratched into the wall and floors (Nik Corrall), leaves you in no doubt for what’s in store.

Brixton Calling, adapted by Alex Urwin from Simon Parkes’ memoir, captures that feeling with exhilarating clarity. This high-energy production tells the true story of how Parkes, then a 23-year-old public school-educated outsider, bought a crumbling old cinema in Brixton for £1 and turned it into the cultural juggernaut that it still is today. From The Clash to Fela Kuti, the Academy became a cultural powerhouse, and this show captures the chaos and charisma behind the scenes.

Urwin’s script moves at pace, leaping from Parkes’ childhood in Grimsby to the privileged corridors of a Scottish boarding school, and eventually into the heart of 1980s Brixton. It’s funny, sharp, and full of twists and turns. Max Runham is compelling as Simon Parkes, and Tendai Humphrey Sitima brings spark and range as his friend and collaborator Johnny Lawes. Together they morph into dozens of characters, from posh schoolboys to gruff Glaswegians, often switching roles and accents with impressive agility.

Originally conceived as a solo show, director Bronagh Lagan wisely suggested expanding the cast to better reflect the diversity and energy of the Brixton scene. It works well, though the structure still leans heavily toward Runham, who steers much of the narrative via direct address, with Sitima often in more supporting parts. That doesn’t mean Sitima is not impactful. His portrayal of Lawes’ encounter with the police during the 1985 Brixton Riots is shockingly visceral.

What elevates Brixton Calling is its use of the music that makes the venue a success. Runham and Sitima, both accomplished musicians, weave live performance seamlessly into the storytelling – punctuating moments of revelation or emulating the many artists who’ve graced the Academy’s stage. They move easily between guitar, piano and vocals, infusing the production with authenticity and rhythm.

The play does lose momentum slightly in its final third. As the energy of 80s anarchism gives way to 90s hedonism, the focus shifts from Parkes’ personal journey to broader musical history, and the emotional momentum dips. A rave sequence suffers from muddy sound mixing (Max Pappenheim’s only real misstep), with dialogue often drowned out by overpowering bass.

This gives way to a series of near-misses – an expensive booking collapse, a violent attack, a brush with the IRA – that push Parkes to question if he can keep pouring everything into the Academy. He eventually decides to sell up, with the venue becoming the crown jewel of an expanding Academy chain. There’s a sense of bittersweet inevitability, a nod to how the independent culture that helped places like Brixton to thrive often gets swallowed by bigger fish with bigger pockets.

But Brixton Calling is, above all, a feel-good celebration of live music and bold risk-taking. It’s a rousing reminder that sometimes all it takes is a bit of luck, a lot of guts, and a deep love of the arts to make something out of nothing – at least in a corner of South London.

THE WHITE CHIP

Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★★

“There is a lot of fun to be had along the way in this remarkable piece”

There’s an old joke that has been doing the rounds for quite some time now, that goes something along the lines of ‘quitting alcohol is easy… I’ve done it hundreds of times’. It is a very apt phrase for Steven, the protagonist of Sean Daniels’ profoundly autobiographical play “The White Chip”. Steven has relapsed many times; the titular ‘white chip’ is a token given to a newcomer or somebody returning to an ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ programme, signifying the beginning of a journey towards recovery and sobriety. There’s an obvious flippancy to the above one-liner, but like many jokes it is rooted in truth. Daniels knows that the best way to get a serious message across is to dress it up in fine humour, and in this respect, his play is the epitome of style. There are many laughs that, on close inspection, are dangerously close to the bone.

Steven tasted his first beer as a pre-teen. His first sip tasted terrible. The second wasn’t so bad, and by the third his love affair with booze began. Love affair? An abusive relationship. For much of his adult life Steven is a functioning alcoholic. He graduates, he creates a successful theatre company, gets married. He is riding high. In tandem, however, his marriage is on the rocks, he distances himself from his ailing parents, he loses his job. He is plunging low. We follow Steven through various trials, witnessing his tactics to keep his destructive drinking habit secret. Ed Coleman, as Steven, gets right to the core of the character, portraying him with striking realism. It is almost impossible to see where Daniels ends and Coleman begins – writer and actor becoming one and the same. Sentimentality is abandoned as Coleman recounts his tale, for the most part addressing the audience while at other times slipping into dialogue with the many people his tumultuous life affects. Mara Allen and Ashlee Irish take on these characters with brilliant and stylised multi-rolling: colleagues, drinking buddies and, with aching poignancy, the suffering parents. Allen’s portrayal of Steven’s mother – also a recovering alcoholic – is cutting and compassionate, extremely funny and ultimately moving.

But it is Coleman, with his chiselled physicality and expert hold on the text, that commands our attention. Daniels’ writing, which has the feel of an extended monologue, resonates with shades of a more family-friendly Hunter S. Thompson. Matt Ryan directs with a masterful eye on the essence of the piece. Allan and Irish continually orbit Coleman’s central character, pulling the anchor away from this desperate character, but eventually helping him find his moorings. Lee Newby’s stark set relies on simplicity: stacked chairs like a Manhattan skyline and a roving table are all that are needed to evoke the various locations, while Jamie Platt’s lighting throws us into the shadows of Steven’s mind only to repeatedly pull us into the glaring reality of his illness with the bright, cold lights of an AA meeting hall.

We learn a lot about the backstory, the lapsed Mormon background and thwarted ambitions. We gain little understanding, however, as to the reasons for Steven’s descent into dependency. But that is the fundamental point. The most common answer to the question of ‘how did it get this far?’ is invariably ‘I don’t know’. Daniels’ play makes no claims to address this. Instead, it addresses the fall out and, more importantly, the potential for recovery. Split into two halves, the balance favours the drinking days leaving us less time to appreciate the road to recovery. But Daniels makes that road more accessible, stripping away the barbed brambles of stigma. His brutal honesty and humour destroy any sense of shame. Fundamentally a true story, it is a heartfelt confession and, in a way, a love letter to those that helped him – in particular his own mother. At a crossroads in his life, Steven (and by extension Daniels) needs to make a decision to live or die. He calls his mother who steers him from the edge, keeps him on the phone for ten whole hours, and saves his life. Even if you haven’t come close to this sort of experience you cannot fail to be moved. But if you do relate to it personally in any fashion, it is authentically powerful, deeply moving and sad, yet steeped in hope.

There is a lot of fun to be had along the way in this remarkable piece, with affectionate jibes at religion and psychobabble. There is a slight tendency towards self-satisfaction towards the closing moments, but we can overlook that. “The White Chip” is a revelation. Intimate, honest, challenging, sensitive but funny too.

BRIXTON CALLING

Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★★

“funny, sharp, and full of twists and turns”

BRIXTON CALLING

Southwark Playhouse Borough

Reviewed on 25th July 2025

by Amber Woodward

Photography by Danny Kaan

Recently reviewed at Southwark Playhouse venues:

BRIXTON CALLING

BRIXTON CALLING

BRIXTON CALLING

THE WHITE CHIP

Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★★

“There is a lot of fun to be had along the way in this remarkable piece”

THE WHITE CHIP

Southwark Playhouse Borough

Reviewed on 15th July 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Danny Kaan

Last ten shows reviewed at Southwark Playhouse venues:

THE WHITE CHIP

THE WHITE CHIP

THE WHITE CHIP

JOIN US