Review: FUTURE PUB, Small Acts - Brighton Fringe
We took our third visit this week to The Fleapit performance space today, joining the mounds of talent at this year’s Brighton Fringe Festival.
The Fleapit is home to a number of Cornish grown talent and today’s offering, Future Pub, is the brainchild of duo, Katie Etheridge and Simon Persighetti of Small Acts. As a company, Small Acts create live performances that invite audiences to ‘investigate their own relationships with the places in which live, work and play’ and Future Pub is definitely a lovely blend of Cornwall and Brighton!
The pair do well in welcoming their audience to the pub instantly and really set the tone for this intimate and community-based performance. Bringing a touch of Brighton into this Cornish adventure, we are welcomed with a taste of Brighton brewed beer, because what kind of pub doesn’t serve beer?! A representative from The Bevy Community Pub in Brighton was also invited to join the performance, acting as pub quiz master and letting us know of his own pub’s efforts in the local area, which really shows a great thought of mind on the part of Small Acts to really blend together their own heritage with the community of their audience. A very wholesome touch, indeed.
The performance itself is a warm and entertaining offering with a delicious variety of music, poetry, interviews from pub locals, and funny theatrics from the duo. The whole message derives from the pandemic’s closure of pubs and social gatherings and asks the question, what is the future of the pub? The performance features a fair bit of audience interaction but instead of feeling forced or uncomfortable, it really creates a community feeling and brings you into the piece itself from the mini pub quiz, to using audience answers to the questions posed for an ad-libbed song. At times, the content of the show feels a little naive and predictable with the rising use of technology in these pub settings taking the brunt of the blame for the diminish of local settings but whether you are an avid pub-goer or not, the performance still humbly hits on humanity’s need for social interaction and community, which the recent pandemic undeniably took away and has yet to fully recover.
Besties, we massively enjoyed our day out at the pub with Small Acts and promise the next round is on us!
*** Three stars
Reviewed by: Natalie Pedro
Future Pub plays at Brighton Fringe until 29 May, with tickets available here.