Month: September 2026

Catherine Bohart: Borrowing Trouble – Soho Theatre

UTS Rating:

I’ll start with a confession of my own: before walking into Soho Theatre last night, I had never heard of Catherine Bohart.

This, it turns out, says rather more about the gaps in my stand-up knowledge than it does about Bohart. The Dublin-born comedian, writer and actor has been steadily building an impressive career for the best part of a decade, with appearances on Live at the Apollo, QI, The Last Leg, Mock the Week, 8 Out of 10 Cats and The Mash Report, alongside several acclaimed solo shows. Her 2018 Edinburgh debut Immaculate announced her as a significant new voice, while Again, With Feelings was nominated for Best Show at the 2024 Edinburgh Comedy Awards and earned a five-star review from The Guardian.

So, I arrived at Soho Downstairs completely new to Bohart and left wondering why on earth it had taken me this long.

Borrowing Trouble, her brand-new hour of stand-up, takes its title from a phrase used by Bohart’s father: essentially, why worry about things that haven’t happened yet and which you cannot control? For someone whose own brain has not always been particularly willing to follow that advice, it provides fertile ground.

What follows is an hour of what I can only really describe as confessional comedy: intensely personal experiences offered up to a roomful of strangers, picked apart and turned into something both very funny and unexpectedly relatable.

Bohart is Irish, was brought up Catholic, is queer and has spoken openly about living with OCD, ADHD and serious mental illness. Borrowing Trouble draws on all of this, alongside relationships, family, sexuality, adulthood and the many peculiar social conventions we collectively accept without stopping to ask why.

There is potentially heavy territory here, but the show never feels weighed down by it. Bohart finds humour in experiences that have plainly not always been funny to live through, without either trivialising them or asking the audience for sympathy. The intensely personal continually becomes universal: you don’t need to share Bohart’s particular background to recognise the anxiety, family expectations, social awkwardness and general absurdity of being a person trying to navigate other people.

She can also make the gloriously mundane very funny. Home ownership, neighbours, dogs, weddings and a particularly disastrous encounter with a new television all become comic territory. At one point, Bohart describes herself as a “lesbian screaming in a basement”, a line that feels especially well chosen while sitting in the subterranean Soho Downstairs.

Catherine’s delivery is phenomenally fast. For the first few minutes I felt as though my brain was jogging slightly behind her mouth, trying to catch up before the next punchline arrived. You have to tune into her rhythm. Once you do, the pace becomes part of the pleasure, with jokes, asides and callbacks tumbling over one another.

That speed becomes even more impressive when she abandons the prepared material and starts talking to the audience.

My friend and I both, somewhat unexpectedly, ended up participating.

During a routine involving pelvic physiotherapy, my friend offered an unsolicited but enthusiastic declaration of solidarity from our table. Bohart heard her, stopped and immediately turned the exchange into another laugh.

Later, while discussing weddings and the increasingly elaborate expectations placed upon their guests, Bohart asked whether anyone had ever contributed towards somebody else’s honeymoon.

Reader, I had.

“Costa Rica,” I told her, just as a rather startling green spotlight swung across the room and illuminated me. Bohart duly commented on my sudden radioactive appearance before asking whether the honeymooners were still my friends.

“No.”

Sometimes the audience supplies the punchline for you.

What impressed me about both exchanges was that Bohart never made the audience feel like prey. Her crowd work is playful rather than combative. She listens properly, catches something interesting and instantly finds the funny route through it before slipping effortlessly back into her material. The audience becomes part of the show without becoming its victim.

There is something enormously endearing about Bohart, too. She is candid about parts of her life that could easily be treated with solemnity, but there is no sense of asking for sympathy. Nor does the comedy diminish the seriousness of what she has experienced. Instead, humour becomes a way of taking ownership of it. Bohart jokes about comedy itself as a kind of hour-long therapy and, given her Catholic upbringing, there is something pleasingly confessional and cathartic about the whole enterprise.

I don’t see nearly as much stand-up as I do theatre, and Borrowing Trouble also reminded me just how much I admire the art form.

There is nowhere to hide in stand-up. No character to disappear inside, no company around you, no lavish set, choreography or score to carry a moment. One person walks onto a stage in front of a roomful of strangers and effectively says: I am going to talk to you for the next hour, and I am going to make you laugh.

And then they have to do it.

Bohart did it. The room roared.

This is an extraordinary skill, and seeing somebody do it this well made me think I really ought to watch more comedy. Bohart is quick, candid, warm, fiercely self-aware and genuinely very funny. Even when the subject matter wanders into anxiety, mental illness and all the trouble our brains can borrow before it has even happened, the evening feels joyous rather than heavy.

I went into Borrowing Trouble knowing nothing about Catherine Bohart.

An hour later, glowing faintly green and having publicly disclosed the holiday destination of two former friends, I was very glad to have met her.

Catherine Bohart: Borrowing Trouble plays Soho Theatre until 3 October before touring the UK and Ireland until 25 November 2026.

Catherine Bohart: Borrowing Trouble – Soho Theatre

UTS Rating:

There can surely be few better places to see Shakespeare than Shakespeare’s Globe, particularly when a production embraces everything this extraordinary space can offer. Chelsea Walker’s Much Ado About Nothing does exactly this: it is bright, playful, physical and gloriously aware of its audience, while still allowing the darkness beneath Shakespeare’s comedy to creep in when it needs to.

Sami Fendall’s clean white set and contemporary costumes immediately establish a world of money, leisure and rather too much time on its inhabitants’ hands. Linen suits and sparkles abound, while the masked ball becomes a parade of extraordinary animal heads, simultaneously ridiculous and faintly sinister. Joseph Potter’s Don John sporting a snake feels especially apt.

But the heart of Much Ado is always Beatrice and Benedick, and Pippa Nixon and Ken Nwosu establish their sparring relationship almost instantly. Their exchanges fizz, but it is Nwosu in particular who proves irresistible. His Benedick seems to regard the Globe audience as several hundred additional scene partners, constantly addressing it, reacting to it and even interacting with the musicians.

That relationship pays off spectacularly during the eavesdropping scenes. Benedick’s attempts to conceal himself while his friends knowingly manipulate him develop into an elaborate piece of physical theatre involving stairs, boards, flowers, water and increasingly desperate attempts not to be discovered. Nwosu’s comic timing is superb. When Beatrice subsequently finds herself subjected to much the same treatment, the production cleverly mirrors the earlier sequence, right down to the soaking.

There is something deliciously silly about watching two intelligent people being so comprehensively manipulated into admitting what everybody else can already see.

Walker surrounds them with a strong company. Marlowe Chan-Reeves is particularly enjoyable as Borachio, making the troublemaker funny, sly and enormously watchable even as his actions propel the play towards its darkest episode. Richard Katz’s Dogberry, meanwhile, heads up a wonderfully comic security-guard-style Watch.

The live music is another pleasure. Angus MacRae’s score threads through the action rather than simply decorating it, performed by musicians including cellists Maddie Cutter, Zosia Jagodzinska and Richard Phillips, guitarist Charlie Laffer and music director/percussionist Zands Duggan. A beautiful cello trio in the second half is a particular highlight.

And then the sunshine disappears.

The public humiliation of Assa Kanouté’s Hero at her wedding remains an extraordinarily brutal gear change, particularly after so much exuberant comedy. The production doesn’t shy away from it. The subsequent funeral procession, with the bright white world replaced by black figures and shadows, is simple and extremely effective.

It also makes Beatrice’s famous instruction to Benedick, “Kill Claudio!!” land with tremendous force. On this particular night it was greeted by a huge cheer from the Globe audience. Joshua John’s Claudio may be painfully easy to manipulate, but by this stage the audience’s sympathies are emphatically elsewhere.

Of course, this is Shakespearean comedy, so death gives way to revelation, reconciliation, marriage and, naturally, the now almost customary slightly bonkers Globe dance to send everyone home smiling.

This is a Much Ado that understands that Shakespeare doesn’t need to be treated reverentially to be taken seriously. It is funny, accessible and exuberantly theatrical, making tremendous use of the Globe’s unique relationship between actor and audience, but finding space for genuine darkness within all the fun.

And in Ken Nwosu’s endlessly inventive Benedick, it has a comic performance worth the ticket price alone.

Much Ado indeed. And very much enjoyed.

🎭 Much Ado About Nothing
📍 Shakespeare’s Globe, London, until Saturday 24^th October, with tickets available here: Much Ado About Nothing | Summer 2026 | What’s On

There is always something magical about taking a taxi home from London late at night. I’ve made that journey down the Old Kent Road myself, cocooned in the back seat while the city flashes past the windows, familiar streets transformed by darkness and artificial light. You watch London, but you’re temporarily detached from it. Eventually you reach your destination, pay the driver and disappear behind your front door.

But what about the person behind the wheel?

That change of perspective lies at the heart of Max Wilkinson’s Night City, a sprawling, ambitious portrait of London after dark that takes us into the lives of the people who keep the capital moving while the rest of us are sleeping, partying or simply passing through.

At its centre is Jack (Jack Ambrose), a driver for the fictional GoGo Cars. Jack’s life is lived largely at night, fuelled by stimulants, pounding clubs, casual encounters and an endless succession of strangers climbing into his car. Through them, and through the parallel stories of care worker Tamara (Helena Pipe) and waitress and aspiring writer Tia (Bex Smith), Wilkinson builds a picture of a city populated by people working precariously, dreaming of something better and making fleeting connections with one another.

There is something distinctly Dickensian about it all. Not the London of fog, gas lamps and hansom cabs kind of Dickens, but a recognisably modern equivalent: the glittering city viewed from its underbelly, sustained by people whose work is often barely noticed by those benefiting from it. The workhouse has been replaced by the app and the star rating, but exploitation, inequality and the struggle to escape your circumstances remain horribly familiar.

That comparison isn’t entirely accidental. Wilkinson has spoken about Dickens as one of the influences on the play, alongside writers including James Joyce and Jean Rhys, and about wanting to create something almost novelistic in scope. The play itself was partly inspired by a night-time journey along the Old Kent Road, when Wilkinson passed the aftermath of an accident involving a delivery rider. That image ultimately found its way into Night City.

The resulting play is enormous in ambition despite the intimacy of the space and the simplicity of Olivia Jamieson’s set. Its most striking feature is a series of heavy chains suspended across the stage. They are moved, manipulated and navigated by the performers, sometimes seeming to divide the space into cages, sometimes becoming part of the architecture of the city itself.

For me, those chains became one of the most powerful images in the production. They suggest the forces binding these characters to lives from which escape is difficult: money, work, technology, responsibility and circumstance. Throughout the play the actors also smear black grease from a tin onto one another’s faces. The meaning of this is left open to interpretation, but I found something rather moving in the idea of these lives literally leaving their mark: the dirt and residue of the city accumulating on the people who keep it functioning.

However, the chains also contain a contradiction. Threaded through them are lights which, when illuminated by lighting and video designer Arnim Friess, can become almost blindingly bright. Suddenly the very objects that appeared oppressive are transformed. The chains still bind, but they also carry the light. There is a way through.

The lit chains are a beautifully simple visual representation of something Night City repeatedly explores: these characters may be trapped by economic and social forces, but they are not merely victims. There is humour here, alongside music, sex, ambition, affection and moments of genuine connection. Darkness and possibility exist side by side.

The design is particularly effective when Jack disappears into London’s nightclubs. Chains, hard white light, pounding sound and bodies in constant movement create a remarkably convincing industrial club environment. I’ve been in those clubs, and the sensory assault here feels unnervingly authentic. With very little physically on stage, director Ebenezer Bamgboye and his creative team repeatedly conjure entirely different corners of nocturnal London.

Running at around 90 minutes without an interval, the production barely pauses for breath. That feels entirely appropriate: Jack keeps driving, London keeps moving and characters flash in and out of one another’s lives. An interval would only break the spell.

And they do all of this with just three actors.

Ambrose, Pipe and Smith populate Wilkinson’s city with a dizzying succession of passengers, workers, patients and strangers, switching age, accent, physicality and personality at speed. All three are superb, and Bamgboye’s direction demands extraordinary versatility from them.

It seems almost unfair to pick a favourite from such an accomplished trio, but Bex Smith’s Gigi particularly stayed with me. Her transformation into the elderly woman cared for by Tamara is wonderful, funny and deeply human. Helena Pipe brings warmth and vulnerability to Tamara, particularly as the pressures of a care system that allows too little time for the people who need it most begin to take their toll, while Jack Ambrose gives the restless driver at the centre of the story a compelling mixture of swagger, recklessness and fragility. Pipe also has a beautiful singing voice, used to lovely effect.

If Night City occasionally loses me, it is in Wilkinson’s writing rather than the performances or production surrounding it. The play moves through a huge number of characters and scenes, its stories colliding and overlapping in a deliberately fragmented way. At times I struggled to establish immediately who someone was or precisely how a particular strand connected to another.

Ambiguity can be exciting; it asks an audience to do some of the work. But there are moments here when Night City risks becoming too inaccessible for its own good. Wilkinson’s ideas are fascinating, but they are not always communicated with the same clarity with which they have clearly been conceived. Knowing something about the premise beforehand certainly helped me find my way through it.

Yet perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay Night City is that I was still unpicking its imagery on the journey home. The chains, the grease, the bursts of almost painful light and the disparate lives intersecting for a few minutes before separating again all continued to reveal connections after the play had finished.

And then there is Jack’s heart.

His lifestyle is chaotic and physically punishing, but his heart problems also provide Night City with its most potent metaphor. Night after night, Jack drives through London’s arteries, carrying people from one part of the city to another. Around him are Tamara, Tia and countless other largely invisible workers, driving, delivering, caring, serving, cleaning and keeping the metropolis alive while somebody else gets to enjoy its magic. They are its circulation. They are its pulse.

Whilst Night City may occasionally make us work harder than it needs to in order to understand its characters and events, Wilkinson, Bamgboye and an exceptional cast make a compelling case for turning our attention away from the view through the taxi window and towards the people whose labour keeps the lights of the city burning.

The next time I find myself travelling home down the Old Kent Road late at night, I suspect I’ll look at the person in the driver’s seat rather differently.

Night City continues at Southwark Playhouse, Borough, until 3^rd October 2026, with tickets available here: Night City – Southwark Playhouse Borough

UTS Rating:

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