REVIEW: The Dirty Thirty at The Rosemary Branch Theatre, 11 September – 31 October 2026
"I can't fault the ambition and the concept, both of which work as ideas in principle."
The Dirty Thirty is a cross between experimental theatre, an improv sketch show (though call it that at your peril), and a weekend drama club. The premise is compelling though – the company will attempt to perform 30 original plays in 60 minutes. It's sort of Sh*tfaced Shakespeare meets other condensed parody formats.
The problem is that they're not plays – they're sketches at most, but mostly random scenes, performance art, or just seeds of ideas. In theory, the audience shouts out any number between 1-30 and the ensemble will perform it. They'll do this by turning theatre inside out in a promisingly absurdist and abstract way, revealing the inner workings of the show from the script to the thoughts of the actors as they run about preparing for each piece.
In this way, the show is very consciously Neo-Futurist (the 80s movement of non-illusory, lo-fi messiness), maybe overly so. The concept is intriguing, but it's constantly working against itself: the plays don't really work in any order, the scene changes are too OTT, and the plays aren't plays.
One of the sketches – which seems to condescend the audience by explaining that this is what most people imagine by "thirty plays" – actually IS a play, featuring a warring couple at a dinner table. It’s ironically one of the best moments – though I suppose it's supposed to highlight how boring and traditional it is. It generally works as a piece of flash fiction, with a nice funny punchline. However, I can't tell whether the moment is supposed to be self-deprecating towards the company, for not making more of these, or chastising towards the audience, for thinking this is what the show should be.
There's also a fun and relatable skit about a breakdown at a self-checkout, told quite creatively using the robotic phrases we all know so well from totting up our purchases. But these moments are vanishingly rare, often damaged by the distracting chaos either side of them.
Most of the pieces come across more like a very long in-joke: how it feels to take a play to the Edinburgh Fringe, how it feels to audition... Unless you're catering to friends and family, your general audience isn't going to care or relate.
The company also wants to assure us in one of the pieces that this show isn't improv. Though I liked the meta-skit of showing the audience the script in real time as they did this, it doesn't land for me. It isn't written or performed well enough to be convincing and comes across like further lecturing of the audience.
But there's a bigger creative disconnect. If this isn't improv, then the scene changes need to be tightened up and rely less on...improv. You can keep the chaos and authenticity, but have it tight and controlled and refined for maximum impact. It doesn't work to have it both ways. Now, if I'm completely wrong and these bits ARE all scripted as well, then the point still stands – it needs some refinement, Neo-Futurist or not.
Ultimately, I think what this piece needs to be is straight-up comedy (as it's kind of billed), but what it wants to be is profound. Too much abstraction, too much on-the-nose social commentary. For me, it could be both funny and insightful if given a chance, but it's undermined by a determination for high-concept and a creative but ineffective structure.
I have no issue with unconventional or experimental, or neo-futurism, and in that way I can't fault the ambition and the concept, both of which work as ideas in principle: neo-futurist ultra-realism and thirty abstract micro-plays. The element of authentic and ever-changing challenge is fun too and the performers do have charm, though some lacking a bit in confidence.
If these were thirty very funny, very clever, fully-formed sketches, with shorter intervals between them, then I think there could be something special here. But it pains me to say that they're not really any of those things just yet. At the moment it comes across a bit more like watching a GCSE drama class write their final year piece in real time.
Nevertheless, it is of course entirely subjective; and with The Dirty Thirty's changing cast and content, the beauty is that every performance is different. You might get something excellent. It's just that, on this occasion, my night was more of the Not Great Twenty-Eight.
The Dirty Thirty
Created and performed by Degenerate Fox UK
The Rosemary Branch Theatre, 11 September – 31 October 2026
Box Office: https://www.rosemarybranchtheatre.co.uk/show/the-dirty-thirty-124
Photography credit: Wesley Anthony
Reviewed by Alix Owen
Alix Owen is a Pushcart Prize nominated writer from Wales. His work has appeared at the Liars’ League, the Camden Fringe, and in print and digital anthologies internationally.
