OUR PUBLIC HOUSE
Marylebone Theatre
★★★½
“a captivating story with a real-life conclusion”
Our Public House, finishing its national tour this week at Marylebone Theatre, is very well worth catching as an unusual and highly engaging example of community inspired themes woven into a narrative drama by a professional writer and director.
Dash Arts under the artistic direction of Josephine Burton held speech writing workshops country-wide during which 700 pieces were written by ‘ordinary’ people with something to say. Speech writing workshops are very much part of how 20-year-old Dash Arts brings communities together. Here, writer Barney Norris has taken the workshops’ output to pull together a play with music that is both heartwarming and hard-hitting.
Sanjana, convincingly played by Bharti Patel, has lost her husband. She is trying to keep his late business – a local pub – going but is facing its closure. Her daughter Anika (Chaya Gupta) is developing her own career as a teacher and offers little support but has dropped in for half term. Most of the action is set in the pub – ‘The Albion’. In the background – for now – is a recent failed parliamentary election where so many ballot papers were spoiled that a new candidate – Mary – has been put forward and a new by-election is to be run. Meanwhile the pub regulars drop in for Sanjana’s warmth and support: Scott (Fergus O’Donnell) and Jo (Lauren Moakes). Soon they are joined by the new Labour candidate (played by Gabriella Leon) and her party worker Tom (Kit Esuruoso). They are keen to sit with their potential constituents and find out what matters to this community.
It’s all there and this is a cleverly woven piece – a coat of many colours. Mary is deaf (all dialogue is captioned and sign language is used extensively). Jo is out of jail, living on her mother’s sofa, and desperate to recover her child now in foster care despite her drink problem. Tom is suitably realistic about the value of listening to people’s concerns without the power to act. There are revelations, despair, fun and lots of love.
Surprisingly missing, as has been pointed out during the tour, are the influences created by the rise of the far right in these communities. But this could easily have been too much to assimilate. The second act brings onstage members of the non-professional community, presumably invited in from the workshops, to fill out the cast and deliver two ‘real’ speeches. Every performance celebrates different people and their different speeches. Last night one dwelt on the need to rehumanise society, the other on homelessness. There was an element of singing in these speeches with the pub visitors present joining.
What started as an evening where the creative process was potentially going to be of most interest, ended as a captivating story with a real-life conclusion. There was neither soap nor sentimentality here and the voices, if difficult to listen to, rang true.
OUR PUBLIC HOUSE
Marylebone Theatre
Reviewed on 1st July 2026
by Louise Sibley
Photography by Pamela Raith
