REVIEW: The Choir of Man - Brisbane Festival

The Choir of Man

Presented by: Brisbane Festival, Andrew Kay, and Nic Doodson

Date attended: 4 September 2026

Created by: Andrew Kay and Nic Doodson

Venue: Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent, Festival Village, South Bank

Cast: Ifan Gwilym-Jones, Norton James, George Knapper, Connor Mellor, Alex Mallalieu, Mark Loveday, Kristian Morse, Tyler Orphé-Baker, and Tristan Whincup

Photography: Morgan Roberts

“Welcome to the best pub in the world!”

If my local pub contained this many excellent singers, multi-instrumentalists, and tap dancers, I’d probably go out more often!

The Choir of Man transforms Brisbane Festival’s Spiegeltent into The Jungle, a British pub populated by nine blokes doing what blokes in pubs have done for centuries: drinking, chatting, stirring each other up, and having a yarn with whoever happens to be nearby. On the stage you'll find beer taps, sticky floors, an old upright piano, plenty of bottles, and even urinals. Classy.

Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent is exactly the right home for it. The rounded space pulls everyone close, performers wander through the crowd pouring drinks, patrons head onto the stage for a beer, and people shout across the room. For a good chunk of the opening, I wasn’t entirely sure where the pre-show ended and the show began. Across 75 minutes, out come guitars, piano, ukulele, banjo, trumpet, whistle, shakers, percussion, and cajón. Beer glasses become instruments. And their nine voices snap into tightly arranged harmonies.

We’re encouraged to sing, yell, clap, drink, and generally behave in ways that would earn stern looks in most theatres. Nobody is reverently waiting for a soprano to finish her aria. The guy in front of me was yelling the lyrics to ‘500 Miles’ while flailing a beer cup above his head. Mine was certainly one of the loudest audiences I’ve sat among in a while.

Each bloke has his own personality and reason for being at The Jungle, with a narrator guiding us around the group. It’s enough structure to keep the night from becoming just an elaborate pub covers band. The character archetypes are familiar, the cast sell the friendships, and the British humour thrives on teasing, physical comedy, and men behaving like absolute idiots in the company of other men they trust.

The jukebox jumps between songs like ‘You’re the Voice’, ‘The Impossible Dream’, ‘50 Ways to Leave Your Lover’, ‘Somebody to Love’, ‘Escape (The Piña Colada Song)’, ‘Teenage Dream’, and plenty more. I particularly loved the inclusion of more modern choices like ‘Chandelier’, ‘Wake Me Up’, and ‘Some Nights’, although my audience's enthusiasm noticeably dropped for a couple of the newer songs.

Some of the best numbers take songs somewhere much sillier than expected. George Knapper tap dances across the bar and tables, his feet slicing through the music as though somebody ticked ‘select all’ on the musical theatre casting form. Adele’s ‘Hello’, led by Tristan Whincup, sees the pub full of men watching football in exaggerated slow motion around him, turning a sporting match into a miniature Greek tragedy. Red Hot Chili Peppers’ ‘Under the Bridge’ takes place at the urinals. Water pours. Men sing. Nobody makes eye contact.

The beer-glass choreography during ‘Some Nights’ is another piece of precision disguised as mucking around. Glasses are passed around, strike tables, clink together, and build into percussion while the vocals carry over the top. The timing has to be exact, yet the cast retain the loose energy of mates who’ve invented a game at the pub.

Mark Loveday brings out a glorious falsetto for Freddie Mercury and commits himself passionately to ‘Escape (The Piña Colada Song)’. And I have to mention Tyler Orphé-Baker. His voice has a gorgeous depth to it, and there’s an ease and warmth in the way he occupies the pub that repeatedly pulls my attention back to him. Even surrounded by nine high-energy personalities, he has a presence that doesn’t require constant fighting for focus. Norton James is also (scientifically speaking) a cutie patootie with a guitar. I have no further critical analysis to offer on that point.

The audience interaction extends beyond free-flowing beer and singing along. Several women are brought onstage to be serenaded, which naturally sends sections of the audience into states normally associated with hen parties. It is worth knowing before you go that the drinking culture isn’t merely decoration. It’s built into almost every part of the experience. I don’t drink beer (intolerance), and I wasn’t planning to drink while reviewing anyway, so being one of the few sober people in a very merry room can feel isolating. I still had enormous fun, but I was also keenly aware that I was surrounded by a lot of drunk strangers... In my case, an older man seated in front of me repeatedly tried to involve me in his evening with high-fives and playful touching before eventually grabbing my knee. No thank you, stranger. We have not unlocked that level of friendship. That behaviour was obviously his responsibility, not the production’s, but it did highlight the flipside of creating such a convincing pub atmosphere. The Choir of Man deliberately loosens normal theatre etiquette, and most people understand that “have fun” still includes basic personal boundaries and women's comfort.

Amid all the laddish chaos, the script is interested in why these men keep returning to this place and to one another. A few of the spoken sections push hard into sentiment, but the individual characters stop the whole thing turning into a lecture entitled Men Have Feelings Too.

The loudness is part of the appeal for most of the night. But when the company closes with a traditional folk song sung a cappella, we finally get those nine voices exposed. Or we should. A thumping band or DJ outside the Spiegeltent bled straight through the venue and competed with the quietest song of the night. I was trying desperately to listen while the BrisFest outside entered its nightclub phase. It’s a shame, because the contrast between the rowdy evening and that simple final arrangement deserved to be heard.

Even so, The Choir of Man sent me out grinning! It’s pub culture filtered through theatre logic. May I petition to add 'Brandy You're a Fine Girl' to the setlist?

Also, regular pubs need to lift their game.