Review: THE CHOIR OF MAN is Exactly What You Expect

If you've ever thought you needed a live show about a pub choir of burly men, have I got news for you. The Choir of Man is literally that, and apparently they're big in the UK.

The pub choir features 9 men, each with his own personality type -- The Poet (Conor Hanley), The Handyman (Jordan Crouch), The Pub Bore (Jahlil Burke), The Hard Man (Adam Bayjou), The Beast (Ed Tunningly), The Romantic (Mark Irwin), The Barman (Josh Lloyd), The Maestro (Ollie Kaiper Leach), and The Joker (Aled Davis).

But if you had me recall who each of them was, I'd probably match half of their names to their faces. The Poet is generally the narrator, but there's not really a plot. Each of them has somewhat of a surface-level backstory.

For example, The Bar Man loves pouring beer for people at the pub, and he sings "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)." The Romantic hopelessly keeps swiping on dating apps...for a boyfriend, which I thought was a nice addition of unexpected queerness to the cast. You can also tell he's gay because he sings Adele's "Hello" while the other guys watched televised sports in slow-motion. (This was my favorite part for a lot of reasons.)

Throughout the 90-minute performance, each man gets his chance to perform his own number when he's not backing up another. The pub is called The Jungle, and I'll give you one guess as to what song that leads into. There's a few rousing group numbers too, and they featured a lot of fun movement. The whole vibe was a bit like once. meets Glee, although I wish it was a bit more intimately staged than in the massive Buell Theatre. I'd see this show again if it were immersively set in a real pub.

You'll likely recognize a lot of the music, save for some traditional songs near the end. There's a sing-a-long of "500 Miles," but by the time they let you do any of the singing, you're kind of over it. I also wished their acapella version of "Chandelier" featured some of their higher registers hitting the satisfying higher notes at the chorus, but it was pretty nonetheless.

Throughout the show, The Poet will pop in for a few timely monologues, mostly reminding the crowd of the loss of gathering spaces like pubs during the pandemic, and how much we all missed them. There was actually a lot of talk about what the pandemic took, and calls for applause about theatre being back. I'd be interested to see what the pre-covid version of the show looked like.

But if what you want is a bunch of men singing in a bar setting, The Choir of Man delivers it to you. For such a short show with a smaller cast, I craved a bit more vocal gymnastics, yet the performances were still charismatic, and they had the crowd around me on their feet near the end.

The Choir of Man continues its US tour through 2022. For more info, visit choirofman.com.

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