REVIEW: Fanny by Calum Finlay at Kings Head Theatre 25 Oct – 15 Nov 2025

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‘Funny, feisty, feminist farce’ ★★★★

It’s quite an achievement to create a fast-paced farce which, beneath the gales of laughter, makes some quite serious points and never quite stoops to frivolity.

We’re in the 1840s (as the witty mobile phone warning reminds us at the start) in the Mendelssohn family home in Berlin. Fanny is passionate about, and very talented at, music but because she’s female she must not flaunt this. Her destiny as a woman is to marry, run a household and preside over a family. Meanwhile her younger brother, Felix, is Queen Victoria’s favourite composer. Fanny Mendelssohn wrote a lot of chamber music (over 450 pieces)  and one orchestral work but little of it was published in her life time. Modern music scholars now believe that she had far more input into her brother’s work than was previously thought and it is known that six of her songs were published under his name.

It’s a fine premise for a feisty feminist statement, swathed in humour, and Charlie Russell’s Fanny is a force to be reckoned with – leaping on the piano to conduct an imaginary orchestra, pretending to obey her draconian mother (Kim Ismay), falling out with the serious, tiresome Felix (Daniel Abbot) and plotting with her future husband Wilhelm (Riad Richie). She talks with her eyes, does a good line in fury, places every comic word with precision and when she gets the audience to create a piece of music with her she is more in command of the room than ever.

A fine cast of six works seamlessly together. Ismay and Jeremy Lloyd (basically Paul, a talentless younger Mendelssohn sibling) are adept multi-rolers, whose continual appearance in different guises becomes part of the joke. And I loved the drinking song, led by Ismay. Danielle Phillips meanwhile gives us an enjoyable angry, shouty, scheming Rebecka Mendelssohn, the fourth sibling who is always aggrieved.

As Fanny’s long-suffering, non-musical beau, Richie is fun. His Hensel has a passion for puns and at one point launches into a whole accelerating series in Sir Humphrey style. It got well deserved spontaneous applause at the performance I saw. The running Puccini, Verdi, Rossini, Linguini gag grates a bit, though, as Puccini wasn’t born until 1858, eleven years after the early deaths of both Fanny Hensel and Felix Mendelssohn.

There’s a great deal of dashing in and out of doors and rapid on-stage shifts all done with admirable slickness usually with climactic music: Vivaldi, Beethoven and, anachronistically, Tchaikovsky all get into the mix courtesy of composer MD Yshani Perinpanayagam. It gets ever more manic as the crazy plot moves on and the scene in which most of the cast is in two colliding carriages is beautifully done although it’s strung out too long.

In short this is two hours (plus interval) of hilarious theatre. You’ll need tissues to mop the tears of laughter. You will also come away reflecting on the injustice faced by women composers in the past and rejoicing that they are, at last, getting a voice now.

Fanny by Calum Finlay

Directed by Katie-Ann McDonough

Kings Head Theatre

BOX OFFICE https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/fanny-qft1

CAST

Fanny | Charlie Russell

Felix | Daniel Abbott

Lea | Kim Ismay

Paul | Jeremy Lloyd

Rebecka | Danielle Phillips

Wilhelm | Riad Richie

Photography: Photographise