Brighton Festival 2026

Allegra

Thomas Hopkins, SAMS Entertainment, Melissa and Bradford Coolidge, Trunfio McGill.

Genre: Comedy, Contemporary, Drama, Feminist Theatre, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Theatre

Venue: Theatre Royal, Brighton

Festival: Brighton Festival, Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

“My singing was an addiction – of a kind. Some do cocaine I do cabaret.” But it’s the next line that’s the killer. One woman’s spreading joy is a community’s daymare. Peter Quilter’s Allegra written for Maureen Lipman directed and choreographed by Stephen Mear premieres at Theatre Royal Brighton till May 16.

Those who’ve seen Quilter’s Glorious this year will know the brilliant mix of whimsy, song and -here – an often cracking script. Allegra is finer. It’s not in the vein of Quilter’s more serious plays like 4000 Days; but after two hours ten it ends on a profound note. The quartet of actors clearly relish working together; delivering such lines as cocaine and cabaret. There’s more like that, even if this is very superior whimsy.

Allegra’s named by musical parents, certainly meaning speedy tempo, and Lipman whizzes with a crazed bliss throughout, including dancing, certainly singing whilst her fellow cast-members run for cover or join in. Lipman’s character is permanently on a high, delivering fantastical allegories of herself as it were, a person whose compulsion may not be normative, or neuro-typical; is indeed interfering, but who’s not quite on an ego-trip.

What prompts this isn’t quite explained. There’s a homeopathic hint of grief and widowhood (Lipman recently commented “there’s no PhD in widowhood”). Though clearly Allegra, who never made it as a singer, has been diverging sweetly all her life. Quilter’s point though is that joy-givers are treated as alarming, outside properly confined spheres (like the theatre). To be treated, as here, with mind-numbing, depressive drugs. There is no alternative to grey. Quilter begs the question: are we all taking the grey pills? And is Allegra the one sane person?

Well not quite, but… Lipman sings her way through standards like the climactic “Singing in the rain” with rainbow umbrellas. At one point the audience are roped in for “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” helped with surtitles. Which is all part of Ben Bull’s video above which often doubles with eccentric lighting-cues: like a shoal of goldfish, or more prosaically storm clouds. Indeed Justin Williams’ set and costume designs are kooky. A ladder arrives from nowhere to allow one vertiginous moment. The downstairs interior has no stove but includes a kitchen sink. Chairs are more wittily chosen for “style over substance. Exactly as it should be”: which should come with their own chiropractors, Allegra quips. And a slightly psychedelically-lit beyond in violet, by Sam Biondolillo, whose choices often shade to off-kilter. Whilst everyone else’s costumes are functional, Allegra floats in with singular choices. Russell Ditchfield’s sound starts somewhat fiercely and might be tamed. That almost sounds like an anti-Allegra sentiment!

Allegra’s brother Ronen (John Middleton) was burdened with a middle name of “Amadeus” but the only person to love him seems his widowed elder sister: his wife is difficult and the children grown. Harrumphing about in a middling-prosperous elder’s jerkin, Middleton seems to have strayed out of Emmerdale, which he graced as a vicar for 21 years. There’s possibly a small running joke on stereotypes, but Middleton has been back with major roles in the theatre since 2017. Here his warm concern, exasperation and capacity to surprise in several ways towards the end mark him out as the beleaguered moral nexus of the play. Do you bicycle-pump the human heart, or squash it flat? As Kingsley Amis once asked in a poem.

Czech carer and cleaner Anna (Elizabeth Bower) is another fine creation, with a stereotypical but not inaccurate mix of musical warmth (she readily joins in) and pragmatic moral concern. Herself overworked with children, husband and other duties, Anna recalls it was worse for her parents under the Soviets. Bower’s portrayal mixes bluntness with moral outrage and counterpoints Middleton’s character with more daring, egging him on in a sense to do the right thing. “Nobody asks for kindness – it should always come as –  unexpected gift.” Her cooking is so seductive that even the fourth character falls for it.

Officer Rogers (Bailey Patrick) plays a mix of Constable Knapweed out of The Herb Garden (Quilter remembers it at least), who meets the sort of “Evening all’ from Dixon of Dock Green and G&S in “A Policeman’s Lot”. There’s not an atom of conventional stage-policeman about him, except his noisy exasperation (it is quite noisy). But Patrick very subtly fines this down. He starts and continues loud, but dips every so often as another part of him is seduced, and ends heart-warming and affirmative.

Quilter proposes Allegra as a small personal antidote to ward off “all the horror” and we glimpse our world, and how Quilter’s responded. There’s a few non-sequiturs, even absurdities here, and the plot is thin as sheer silk. It’s more than made up for though by Lipman and her fellow cast-members, with an often sublimely witty script, which I won’t spoil by quoting further (or rather I’m redacting quotes, they’re that compulsive). Even PC Rogers is infected. And there’s a surprise. Those who saw The Choir of Man might guess at it. Ayckbourn this isn’t, or Quilter on a serious day. But as an example of a Quilter soufflé, this is the best of his I’ve come across; and Lipman gleams with a supreme gravity-defying performance. Irresistible.

Wigs Designer J J Wigs, Orchestrator Paul Schofield, Music Director Livi Van Warmeld, Casting Director Ron Kelly, Illusion Consultant Chris Cox, Associate Director Joseph Winters, Associate Set Designer Christophe Eynde, Assistant Costume Designer Row  Seward, Production Manager Adam Jeffreys for setting Line Production Management.

CSM Freya Bramble, DSM Michael Clark, ASM Helena Thompson, Wig Supervisor & Dresser Stella-May Heron, Head of Wardrobe Jasmine Fone, Accent Coach Zozana Mikulecka.

Production Electrician Chris Clay, Lighting Programmer Tom Davies, Production Sound Engineers Chris Theobald, Dan Bywater, Production Carpenter Paul Veysey, Workshop Carpenters John Ellis & Dan Speight, Setting Line Production Company Charlie McEvoy.

Producers: Thomas Hopkins, SAMS Entertainment, Melissa and Bradford Coolidge, Trunfio McGill.

Published May 15, 2026 by Simon Jenner