Southwark Playhouse Borough – until 16 August 2025
Reviewed by Phil Brown
4****
This high octane 90 minutes of exceptional drama with music tells the improbable story of how a rebellious teenage rock music fanatic turned fantasy into reality by recognising an opportunity where others did not, and seizing it using his main assets – determination and sheer chutzpah. And the rest is music performance history.
The teenage rebel in question is Simon Parkes and his towering achievement is the Brixton Academy, and we’re not talking educational establishment here, although in some respects it was. The play makes it very clear it was a roller coaster course in people and business management for Simon himself but it also brought quality music and socialist politics to an audience and city in need of more medium sized seatless venues. Simon is very specific – seats do not belong at a rock music gig.
Parkes’ penchant for thinking big and taking serious risks may have come courtesy of his background. His family owned Boston Deep Sea Fisheries – the world’s largest privately owned fishing fleet – and he attended Gordonstoun school in Scotland (where he sat next to Prince Andrew or ponce Andrew as the play has it). But he was nevertheless disadvantaged as a thalidomide baby born without half his left arm. There’s a nice scene in the play where his father’s minder, Mac, tries to prepare him for the brutal experience of life at a boy’s boarding school – “Don’t let anyone get the better of you kid”. Judging by the several times this line is repeated, it seems to have become something of a touchstone for Parkes and one that appears to have rendered him virtually fearless.
With the collapse of the fish business, and cut loose by his old school father, Parkes enters the music business punting records around London when at the age of 23, he spies the abandoned cinema/disco at 211 Stockwell Road, Brixton. With the instinctive audacity that will characterise his subsequent management decisions, he buys the lease for £1 from Watneys, the brewer, on the basis that he will sell only their beer for the next 10 years. Thus, the Brixton Academy was born in 1983.
This brilliantly conceived play is based on Parkes’ 2014 memoir Live at the Brixton Academy: A Riotous Life in the Music Business and with considerable humour chronicles thetwists and turns of making Brixton Academy a going concern and eventually such a success, that Parkes was able to offload it in 1995 for £2.5 million. (What we don’t learn in any detail is how the cash flow actually worked!)
Alex Urwin (writer), John Dinneen (producer) and Bronagh Lagan (director) have turned that material into a dynamic and smartly choreographed two hander (playing multiple parts) that mixes storytelling and dialogue with blasts of music and occasional rave dancing. It works really well in the intimate horseshoe space of the Southwark Playhouse.
The individual performances by Max Runham (playing Simon Parkes amongst others) and Tendai Humphrey Sitima (playing Johnny Lawes – Parkes’ right hand man – and others) are genuinely virtuosic with versatility and fluency plus a naturalness that surely belies the rehearsal that must have gone into this demanding show. Runham in particular is spectacularly adept at switching between characters seamlessly and effectively. Astonishingly, he has the same disability as Parkes yet is still able to play excellent electric guitar. Both performers are accomplished musicians and sing well. The depth of impressive performing talent this country enjoys seems to have no bounds! I thought the well chosen music, sound (Max Pappenheim) and effects hit the spot with possibly room for more. There is an intensity and urgency to the story that properly conveys the excitement of the venture and the nerve jangling, seat of the pants nature of running a potentially precarious business and chasing a dream.
This is a fascinating feel good story of triumph against the odds, or as Simon might say – blagging it, brilliantly realised on stage. One you feel might never be possible again. The Brixton Academy is venerated by punters and performers alike and fully warrants this wonderful, impassioned celebration. It put Brixton on the map for something other than riots. Parkes reckons it pulled a half million people into the area per year – if only that could translate into audience for this superb entertainment. It’s a real blast!