A Small Enclosed Room With Alfie Murphy is a unique and funny show that sometimes struggles to deliver on its strong themes and ideas.
We begin as a one-man style show. Alfie confides in us about his life, telling us about his band ‘The Camden Stoners’ and the struggles he has with his more sociable, but rather shallow bandmate Jai. From the moment our other performer, Anna Constable, puts her head through the curtain (as Alfie’s ghostwriter dressed as a ghost), the show moves at lightning speed. Alfie falls out hard with Jai, travels to India to lose become a guru, and suddenly finds himself thrown into a particularly aggressive talk show interview before the fourth wall comes crashing down as Constable begins to object to all the costumes and roles, she is forced to put on in order to keep Alfie’s story straight.
This feels dizzying by design. This show is about fantasy and how it can be a gift and also a crutch; something we use to escape, but also something that can cloud our sense of self. All of this is explored through a central concept and metaphor: masking.
In taking us through this whirlwind Cian Binchy is an adept performer. He crafts a deeply endearing persona that becomes more layered as he becomes protective over his own narrative. As a result, Alfie is both a relatable everyman and a self-absorbed celeb. It’s a very subtle line and Binchy walks it well, using it to produce a unique brand of comedy. In this, co-writers Shaun Dunne and Leah Moore deserve great credit too.
Binchy’s crowd-work is also phenomenal, and a highlight comes when three songs picked from the audience as a crowd warm-up exercise return in Alfie’s guru phase. He delivers hilariously strange life advice back to the participants from the lyrics of the songs they named at the top of the show.
Constable is also excellent, providing lots of laughs and energy early on, before turning the tables on Alfie. When the show becomes more meta, her speech about the nature of ‘masking’ is striking.
This is especially the case given that both performers are autistic. Wearing a mask to fit in is a universal notion, but for autistic people it has a more potent meaning – the suppression of some of their behaviors in order to be accepted by society. The desire to challenge this is not only the message of the play but is built into the foundations of the production. Access All Areas (the theatre company behind the show) was founded to facilitate work by neurodivergent artists for precisely this reason, and the performance itself was ‘relaxed’, meaning the audience were released from the usual strictures of theatre etiquette.
For all its successes, I found that occasionally the show felt just a little messy. The story tended to jump wildly, which occasionally prevented the show’s themes from developing fully. The production itself is slick enough, and the design team did an excellent job. I just found myself feeling distant from the jokes and the message.
This said, it was obvious that for many around me, this was not the case. Audible sighs of relief and sounds of recognition told me that this was a show that connected deeply with many in the audience. So, while I found the final show not fully to my taste, its core is undeniably brilliant, and for those who related to its material more closely, it clearly delivered in spades.
Playing until 17th May, https://sohotheatre.com/dean-street/
Reviewer: Ralph Jeffreys
Reviewed: 15th May 2025
North West End UK Rating: