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Squires, The Next Blackadder, Plebs, Upstart Crow with Four Days Left

Squires is the next Blackadder, Plebs, and Upstart Crow... and there's only four days left to see it in London.

Earlier this week, I went to see a new play in London, Squires, by Hannah Brecher, which was a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe festival earlier this year, but hasn't been seen anywhere else since, and may never again. And that would be a crime of medieval proportions. To all intents and purposes, this is a workplace sitcom, just a workplace that happens to be the stables for Medieval Knights, with the mucking out of their steeds being seen to be a number of squires. Some may one day be knights, but most won't be. Frustrated aspiration forcing together a bunch of disparate types who otherwise would never share the same space, is the font of great British sitcoms, from Red Dwarf to The Office to The Young Ones to Porridge. Squires, in one performance, earns its place next to these.

And so we have the simplistic lad and wannabe minstrel star Fred, the genius out of time and just waiting for a Renaissance, Dari, the contemplative silent type Otto, the Lady Phillippa posing as her own fiance looking for a better life Phil, and the knight wannabe looking for the Lady Philippa, Lance. Throw in the visiting Phillippa's shallow  Tiffany, completely fooled by a drawn-on moustache, and the drug dealer Anaphylaxis, and that's a wonderful stew of a show in a small theatre with one set (the stable) above a very full pub in South Kensington. Hey, it's Christmas, you can always find a miracle in a stable when there is no room at the inn.

It begins with a dead body being carried by the cast, the victim of murder, before flashing back to the cast of characters as they are introduced to their new member, "Phil", who acts as an introduction to them all to us, as they sit around regaling each other of tales of knights slaying dragons, before debating about whether dragons exist or if they went extinct or just off somewhere else, because you don't see a lot of them around here, do you?

Lance, played by Ella Shuttleworth, is a young man with toxic male views on the world and a very simplistic view of women, courtesy of having never met one, though somehow smitten by the Lady Philippa, who he has also never seen. And Phoebe Tompkins as Phil, who finds this ludicrous but might actually have some genuinely useful advice about women to share, as well as some fencing tips. The interplay over what Phil can say without giving herself away, while Lance is happy to talk about women as long as he doesn't realise he is talking to one,  is utterly delicious.

Greg Worden as Fred and Alex Thompson as Dari make for a perfect sitcom pairing. Imagine a very young Simon Farnaby and Jeff Howe. The worldly-wise, languid showoff Fred alongside the nerdy, science-obsessed Dari, insistent on probing that gravity is a thing, while Fred tries to find out if he is a witch or not. I could have watched the pair for hours; I bought them as lifelong friends, where banter has turned into a battle.

Michael Iorchir as Otto is the "cool Mike" of the group, separated from the others in viewpoint but then able to bring everyone together with a single word, giving us the most pregnant and hilarious of pauses. His questioning of Dari's utterances on science being a thing and magic not, asking, "What about religion?" and Dari replying after a beat ", I'm not touching that", had me on the floor in the moment.

Christina Randazzo, as Tiffany, is remarkably horrible, but her ability to turn on a ducat when social standing shifts was hilarious and also rather attractive. I hated her far less than I should have done.

There are probably a few too many deliberately anachronistic Millenial references for my own personal taste in Squires, these were probably the weakest lines and most likely to age. One discussion about the distribution of power in the feudal system seems plucked straight from the Holy Grail. But the heart of the show is personal relationships and friendships, as well as weaknesses, frustrations and self-doubt we can really relate to, transposed across time where expectations may be different, but humans are exactly the same. And that should make Squires timeless if given the chance. And while Squires is very much at home on the stage, the prospect of a TV adaptation, giving us a new Blackadder, Plebs, or Ghosts, feels easiest of possible transfers.

We need more sitcoms, and this is a big one. Squires is only on at the Drayton Arms Theatre until Monday. Including tonight there are four performances left, including tonight. If you can make your way into London on one of those evenings, do so. It's only £12, and when this inevitable does get picked up, you get to say, "Of course, I saw it when it was just a play above a pub", which is the very best theatrical clout you can have… Also, digging in further, I see that these are mostly first- and second-year students. Some of these people are going to be mainstream legends in ten or twenty years based on this performance.

And if you really want to, you can watch me talk about Squires just after I saw it with the cast, unbeknownst to me, hiding round the corner, listening in, trying not to interrupt. And now commenting on the TikTok. How embarrassing…

Squires

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Review by Rich Johnston

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9/10

Before there were knights, there were idiots who thought swinging a sword and being a hero were pretty much interchangeable. Squires is a historical workplace comedy turned comedy of errors as a group of unlikely friends come together under a common goal: to not be accused of murder.

Credits

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Writer

Hannah Brecher

Actor

Ella Shuttleworth

Actor

Phoebe Tompkins

Actor

Greg Worden

Actor

Alex Thompson

Actor

Michael Iorchir

Actor

Christina Randazzo

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