Review: This is My Family, Southwark Playhouse Elephant
Tim Firth's sitcom-esque musical about a family struggling to communicate has a gentle charm
On Tuesday evening at Southwark Playhouse Borough, the atmosphere was pretty wired, reflecting the crazy chaos that is The Frogs. Meanwhile, at the neighbouring Southwark Playhouse Elephant last night, the mood was much more mellow, befitting the unassuming nature of Tim Firth’s (Calendar Girls) musical This is My Family.
Originally directed by Daniel Evans, This is My Family was first presented at Sheffield’s Crucible Studio in 2013; it returned the following year to open the refurbished Sheffield Lyceum and was then revived at Chichester’s Minerva Theatre in 2019. This new production directed by Vicky Featherstone marks the show’s London debut. It’s appealingly lo-tech, set against a quaint Wendy house and a curtain that opens to reveal the band (led by Caroline Humphris) and the great outdoors (designer: Chloe Lamford).
The Perrys are an averagely stressed-out and mildly dysfunctional suburban family (this isn’t Next to Normal or even Little Miss Sunshine). Parents Yvonne (Gemma Whelan) and Steve (Michael Jibson1) have been together since they were 16 but their relationship is increasingly strained by the pressures of everyday life. Morose 17-year-old son Matt (Luke Lambert) is an aspiring druid who dresses like Maleficent and is deep in the throes of his first big romance. 13-year-old daughter Nicky (Nancy Allsop), the engaging anchor of the show, is acting up at school and losing her bond with her brother. There’s also Yvonne’s hippy-ish sister Sian (Victoria Elliott) and Steve’s mother May (veteran Musical Theatre performer Gay Soper), who is in the early stages of dementia.
They’re a group of likeable if rather two-dimensional stock characters. Yvonne is becoming ever more brittle; Steve’s midlife crisis is manifesting in rollerblading and building a hot tub in the rockery, and Nicky has won an essay competition in which the prize is a family holiday of her choice. Instead of an exotic adventure, she chooses the campsite where her parents met, and bucketing rain and chaotic tent construction ensues.
Firth, who provides music, lyrics and book, has written a show that’s closer to a play with music than a musical (at least if you expect a musical to have a couple of production numbers). Conversations are set to music, in which everyone is speaking over each other and no one is listening. There’s a lack of coherence as several start in one place and end up somewhere completely different without a through-line. The refrain of ‘This is my family’ (which echoes the opening bars of the title number in Beauty and the Beast) is an earworm by nature of the number of times it’s repeated and there are several songs that take their cue from the hymn ‘Dear Lord and Father and Mankind’ (in homage to May’s commitment to her faith, which is never elaborated on in any detail). The best of the bunch is ‘If I Say the Same Thing Twice’, a rueful paean to the horrors of ageing and the loss of one’s facilities.
It's more gently amusing than ‘properly’ funny, and the tone is akin to a ‘90s sitcom in which everyone does what’s expected of them. The dialogue is littered with ‘For God’s sake’s and ‘Bloody hell’s and some of the punchlines are blunted by the sound design (an ongoing issue in this space).
There are several points at which the show could end and the epilogue doesn’t feel entirely necessary. In many ways, this piece encapsulates one of my mum’s favourite lines: ‘The journey not the arrival matters’ (originally T.S. Eliot; also the title of the final volume of Leonard Woolf’s autobiography) – and just as significant are those who join you for the ride.
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
3 stars
This is My Family plays at Southwark Playhouse Elephant until 12 July 2025 – more information and tickets can be found here. My ticket was provided by Kate Morley PR in exchange for an honest review.
Dream casting idea: Jibson and his real-life spouse Caroline Sheen as Mr and Mrs Brown in the forthcoming Paddington The Musical.