WORTH A LOOK?: *** (review ticket)

WHEN?: Friday 25 July 2025 (press night), runs through 16 August 2025 RUNTIME: 90 minutes (without interval)

The best thing about this story of the rejuvenation of 1 of London’s greatest venues is its cast playing instruments evoking punk, reggae, rave and rock filling the listener with belief that music at its best really can change the world.

• Read on for reasons including the true story of how Simon Parkes founded Brixton Academy

Max Runham plays Parkes who bought Brixton Academy for a £1 and Tendai Sitima (so good in A Strange Loop, Barbican) his friend Johnny Lawes who work together to turn what was a derelict cinema in 1983 into a venue which would host The Smiths‘ last gig and even stage Wham!‘s Wake Me Up Before You Go Go video.

Parkes writes in the programme: ‘When I first walked into the crumbling old building that would become Brixton Academy, it wasn’t a business move. It wasn’t strategic. It was instinct. I was just a young bloke with no money, no music industry connections, and no idea what I was doing.’

Brixton Calling is lucky to have a director as inspired as Bronagh Lagan (Cruise) who draws out the friendship of the 2 men as being key to their success in negotiating the ‘white-knuckle ride’ they face in a Brixton scarred by riots but bursting with energy.

It’s a time and location that 1 of our favourite films uses to illustrate how LGBTQ+ groups were standing in solidarity with striking miners (indeed author Stephen Beresford is turning Pride into a musical for the National Theatre currently) and Brixton Academy hosts Artists Against Apartheid and the first legal raves.

But with so much it could say it’s surprising how little jeopardy, story or drama there is here to be propelled by a dizzying array of sounds with such diversity and so much history.

Contributors to this site in its 10 years have written about their experiences of gigs at Brixton Academy including perhaps our favourite – a Hurts gig graced by a performance by Kylie Minogue – as well as Charli XCX and the return of Hurts there this year.

But our writers have been going there since the rise of indie to the mainstream in the late 80s and while this is a faithfully told piece of gig theatre that would work very well in a site-specific setting like the Brixton Academy itself there is a bigger, more timely, issue that this piece doesn’t address.

In December 2022, two people died and others were seriously injured following a crowd crush at the door. As a result the venue was closed until April 2024 with reopening subject to meeting council licensing conditions.

Parkes sold the venue long before and it’s little wonder the clearly talented writer of this piece Alex Urwin chose not to dwell on it.

As gig-goers we’ve felt unsafe at Brixton Academy – a 2015 Sam Smith gig springs to mind – and so for us any celebration of this venue feels incomplete without some examination of what caused its recent closure.

• Main pictures via Facebook by Danny Kaan courtesy Southwark Playhouse Tickets
• Have you seen a Southwark Playhouse show before and what do you think of this list? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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