The God of Soho – review

Shakespeare's Globe, London

3 / 5

  • The Guardian,
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Emma Pierson as Natty
Winningly vivacious … Emma Pierson, centre, as Natty. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

It's a mark of the chutzpah of playwright Chris Hannan, director Raz Shaw, and indeed everyone involved in The God of Soho, that the big song-and-dance number at the heart of the show has the cast joyously declaring: "We are so shit." Are they writing their own review? Certainly, there are moments when Hannan's jaggedly poetic script lacks clarity, when the examination of celebrity culture feels less than insightful, and when the abundance of naked flesh and fetish gear becomes gratuitous.

  1. The God of Soho
  2. Shakespeare's Globe,
  3. London
  1. Until 30 September
  2. Box office:
    020-7401 9919
  3. Venue website

But that rumbustious verve is also one of the show's appealing features, along with a cast of larger-than-life characters whose fragility and longing for love make them more compelling than repellent. Those characters range from gods to reality TV stars to a homeless schizophrenic with 319 illnesses.

In heaven, we meet Phil Daniels's raucous Big God, a fallen idol struggling to comprehend the crisis of ugliness enveloping the universe. Appalled by the sight of his daughter, Clem, the goddess of love and sex and beauty, begging another god to kiss her, he banishes her to earth, where she encounters tabloid fodder Natty: a woman who drinks up attention. What Clem witnesses is a battle for Natty's soul, between her homeless sister, Teresa, who wants Natty to remain shallow, angry and self-loathing, and Natty's rock-star boyfriend, Baz, who is stumbling towards meaningful emotion.

Hannan clearly adores Natty: she is garish and crass, yet he never scorns or patronises her. Like the Big God, he is puzzled by the world we inhabit – but he doesn't absolve himself of responsibility for it. At heart, this is a soppy play, a plea for more romance, more gentleness, more humanity in our dealings with each other. But Hannan conceals that soppiness beneath a clipped, aggressive, scatological language that invites winningly vivacious performances, not least from Emma Pierson as the conflicted Natty, Edward Hogg as the posturing Baz and Iris Roberts as the questing Clem.

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