Hit U.K. pub musical to take up residence in Tampa

First produced at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Choir of Man climbed the theatrical ranks and became a runaway hit on London’s West End, where it’s still onstage today.

The Choir of Man travels the pond and arrives in the Tampa Bay area Oct. 3, the start of a nearly two-month engagement at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts (more than 50 performances). It’s the first show in the center’s 2023-24 Broadway season.

Fittingly, the touring production will onstage in the Jaeb Theater, where there are approximately 300 or so seats, rather than the enormous Morsani Hall, where the Broadway shows are normally presented.

The set for The Choir of Man consists of a typical British/Irish pub, with a real, working bar – the better to pour pints of beer for audience members, hand-delivered by the nine-member cast.

They’ll all stout young men, all of them U.K. natives, and in The Choir of Man they sing, harmonize, dance, play instruments, philosophize and knock back a round or two. And yes, the audience is involved in multiple pub-style singalongs.

In this fantasy alehouse, blissfully unaffected by Brexit, these genial, openly emotionally blokes warble their way through a variety of highly amplified pop and roots standards — omni-dude, mostly semi-a-capella versions of hits by your Adele and your Katy Perry, retro re-dos like “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover,” multi-party harmonics on Queen, fun with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, voyages into the shady musical universe of Guns ‘N Roses, even a very nice “The Impossible Dream.” It’s part Once, part boy band that went through a growth spurt, and part Chippendales of the voice box.

Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

The musical arrangements are by Jack Blume. Playwrights Nic Doodson and Andrew Kay (Gobsmacked!) incorporated poetic monologues written by actor Ben Norris. 

“If you need an arm around you, the show gives you that,” Norris told West End Best Friend in 2022. “And if you need some pure escapism, the show gives you that too. You can expect songs you know and songs you don’t, sometimes in some quite surprising arrangements, and a pint at the on-stage bar if you want one.

“It’s an invitation to dance, to sing, to connect, to be merry, and – above all – to have a bloody good night out.”

The Choir of Man runs Oct. 3-Nov. 26 at the Jaeb Theater. For tickets and other information, click here.