REVIEW: BELLY OF THE BEAST at Finborough Theatre 7 Jan – 1 Feb 2025

'a gentle, nuanced look at the UK schooling system, and how it fails … '★★★★

A siren screams, crimson lights flash and a student sprints out and starts scrubbing blood off their hands—is this a detective thriller, or a modern retelling of Macbeth? Neither (although Macbeth does pop up later). It's the start of a gentle, nuanced look at the UK schooling system, and how it fails those in quote-on-quote deprived areas in general and non-binary people in particular. 

The Belly of the Beast is writer Saana Sze's debut full-length play and the winner of 2022's ETPEP Award. As the Finborough's first in-house production in years, it's also a script that the theatre has obviously thrown its trust and weight behind. For a venue that frequently champions new writing, the choice makes sense: this is a densely written text, its 90 minutes consisting of two clever, packed monologues. They function in parallel and succeed in weaving together a wealth of plot and information. 

Writer Sze has actually worked in schools, and it shows. Their sketchings are on point and funny. From ‘Miss, you're boring’ to ‘How're you gonna try to light a whole teacher on fire?’, the pupils at the ‘really, really bad’ schools in question are sometimes endearing, sometimes terrifying. The focus is on non-binary student-turned-teacher Martha, with Sam Bampoe-Parry and Shiloh Coke playing them at different phases of their life. 

Bampoe-Parry, a recent LAMDA grad, plays YoungMartha as a skittish teenager, one who feels uncomfortable squeezed into traditional girls' clothing but doesn't quite know why. And its not just the concept of gender fluidity with which this Martha, raised in a religious family, is unfamiliar—the idea of non-heterosexual attraction, too, seems outside their comprehension. YoungMartha lights up when describing a crush on a female teacher or holding hands with best friend Gia, but doesn't connect the dots. ‘If I was a boy, I'd fancy her’ is as far they go. Bampoe-Parry does an excellent job of playing someone on that cusp of self-discovery, who ends up in precarious situations while never letting us forget that they are, well, a child.

NowMartha, meanwhile, wears a binder, has a devoted wife and seems sure of their values and identity. Until, that is, they are confronted with the rigid hierarchies and categorisations of the UK schooling system. ‘I really, really want it’ they say about their new teaching job—so ‘I let them call me miss, even though every time it feels like chipping away at me’. Coke's portrayal has emotional weight, while mining the quoted side characters for their full comedic worth.

What connects both Marthas is a fear of confrontation, a weakness for taking the easy route. Their respective betrayals—of their loved ones, of themselves—give the play some much-needed narrative tension. Director Dadiow Lin also keeps things flowing and shifting nicely in designer Delyth Evans's flexible set. Still, there's no hiding that writer Sze is cramming in a lot of information. In some ways, The Belly of the Beast is as a much a dissertation against the UK schooling system as one individual story. The pamphlet handed out with the show underlines this, listing facts and figures to show how the ‘UK system is deeply entrenched in binary frameworks’. The structure of parallel monologues further restricts the theatrical possibilities. Would interactions between the two actors have worked with the concept? I'm not sure, but I occasionally found myself yearning for them.

Yet The Belly of the Beast captures our sympathy and attention from beginning to end—a testament to the nuance and care brought from all sides 

of the cast and creative team.

Images: Ali Wright

BOX OFFICE



Cast

YoungMartha: Sam Bampoe-Parry

NowMartha: Shiloh Coke

Creative Team

Playwright: Saana Sze

Director: Dadiow Lin

Set and Costume Design: Delyth Evans

Lighting Design: Arnim Friess

Sound Design: Max Pappenheim

Stage Manager: Oli Fuller

Casting Director: Elizabeth Sweeney

Producer: presented by Clarisse Makundul Productions and Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre