Belly Of The Beast – Finborough Theatre

Any kind of societal ill is, like society, gigantic. A hyperobject. Something that expands beyond what the human mind can easily grasp. Often, theatre that tries to engage with such phenomena can feel some combination of lost, scattered, bloodlessly instructional. This is not the case with The Belly of the Beast at Finborough Theatre.

We begin in a small black box theatre, arranged tennis-court style, with two simple spaces dispersed across time – an office and a classroom – that, thanks to the set-lighting-sound work of Delyth Evans, Arnim Friess and Max Pappenheim, provides an excellent environment for the action of the play, dynamic and real without distracting from what happens next. Things really come to life, however, through the performances: Sam Bampoe-Parry and Shiloh Coke, playing the same-but-different-characters, Young Martha and Now Martha, in what functions as a pair of interwoven one-person performances, deftly taking air and action in the ebb and flow of each other. Both Bampoe-Parry and Coke imbue their characters with a powerful combination of groundedness, humour and vulnerability, and both keep the audience consistently engaged throughout the show’s length. There’s something especially tender about Coke’s Now Martha, in their quest to do right by themself and their students; there’s something especially exciting and moving about Bampoe-Parry’s Young Martha, trying to capture feelings and experiences that they don’t yet have the language to fully articulate. Combined with the direction of Dadiow Lin, the two characters present as meaningfully distinct while remaining continuous with each other, in a way that feels authentic to how a person changes from their early teens to their mid-twenties. Lin’s direction also helps Bampoe-Parry and Coke effectively animate all the other characters that inhabit these narratives, making this two-hander breath with wide ranging life, and assures that, in the back and forth between the actors, the play runs frictionlessly.

Bringing everything together is the work of playwright Saana Sze, who’s composed a story, a pair of stories, that captures some of the fundamental tragedy woven into our educational system, and how it fails students and teachers in a variety of ways. What’s especially powerful about Belly Of The Beast is that it manages to do this not by making big, bold claims about Society™ (not withstanding some throwaway lines about Adam Smith and the 1870 Education Act) but by presenting a human experience of having to navigate a system that is not designed with everyone’s flourishing in mind, and seeing how painful that is. And it is quite painful, at times – though it never lapses into despair.

This show does not offer easy answers, but it asks good questions, and, like all good art, it reveals something that might otherwise have remained hidden, especially from those who, long since graduated, might no longer engage much with the educational system. So, I ask you, reader: What is school for? Come to the Finborough Theatre to see.

Playing until 1 February 2025, https://finboroughtheatre.co.uk/production/belly-of-the-beast-2/

Reviewer: Zak Rosen

Reviewed: 10th January 2025

North West End UK Rating: