Review: The Choir of Man by Nina Jervis-Green

September 16, 2026

The Choir of Man feels like being locked in a traditional, sticky-floored pub with the barman and its resident all-male choir, your only refreshments pork scratchings and unlimited pints of beer. Pay attention to that sentence, as the amount of personal joy or dread it inspires will most likely correlate with your enjoyment of this show.

Debuting at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2017, Nic Doodson and Andrew Kay’s much-loved jukebox musical celebrates the good old British boozer – The Jungle, in this case – and its male regulars, who see the pub as a kind of sanctuary. There’s even a working bar on stage, where members of the audience clamoured for pints, took gleeful selfies, and chatted casually with the cast before the show began. This did a great job of establishing a welcoming and convivial atmosphere right from the off.

We’re then properly introduced to those regulars, by way of snappy monologues written by the performance poet Ben Norris, and delivered by the pub’s Poet (‘Nimi’ Owoyemi). Each one has a Spice Girls-style moniker that offers a sense of the classic ‘pub character’ they are, so we’ve got Bore (Lewis Dragisic), Beast (Rob Godfrey), Joker (Ben Mabberley), Maestro (Gustav Melbardis), Hard Man (Levi Tyrrell Johnson), Romantic (Sam Walter), Handyman (Niall Woodson), and finally, Barman (Joshua Lloyd), who oversees the evening’s japes.

As acknowledged by Norris in the show’s programme, there’s no real story to speak of. Instead there are games, rowdy singalongs (Maestro leads us all in a rendition of The Proclaimers’ 500 Miles that it’s impossible not to join in with), cheeky moments of audience participation, and even a musical turn at the urinals, as we’re invited to explore and celebrate every inch of what makes a pub… a pub.

Choir of Man has partnered with the charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) which offers a helpline and webchat to stop people from bottling up their problems and potentially saving their lives. As such, the show offers constant, subtle reminders that men are most at risk here, either through the Poet’s subtle hints or a well-chosen song. A particular highlight is Romantic’s plaintive rendition of Hello (Adele, not Lionel), sung as the others watch (and react to) a televised sports match.

Other chat-distractions include Handyman’s show-stopping tap routine (magnificently choreographed by Freddie Huddleston), some useless fact-swapping, and the painstaking construction of a house of cards. Other songs, like a harmonised rendition of Sia’s Chandelier, highlight those heady feelings of release – but also the guilt and emptiness – that can ultimately result from choosing drinking over talking.

Despite these fleeting sober elements, there are no moments of redemption or change here. As in life, the characters continue on as they are, and the show ends on a high musical note that felt rousing but left me questioning the point of it all.

It should be said, though, that The Choir of Man promises only to take people on “a bloody good night out” – and for the vast majority of the audience, it’s clear that that’s exactly what it did.