FringeReview UK 2026
Foal
Presented by Indira Varma and Hannah Farley-Hills for HFH Productions and Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre.
Genre: Contemporary, Drama, Fringe Theatre, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Political, Short Plays, Solo Play, Theatre
Venue: Finborough Theatre
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
The Finborough have form with five-star solo shows. This is clearly another flued and sanded with the ferocity of pursuit. Yet pausing to stroke a mastiff on the way out. To care. Outstanding.
Review
“Little foal… I did well. I won the fight for you.” Who cares for the little boy A.K. who’s racially abused, but whose equally-abused family don’t realise he’s fought back? Whose pacific dignified parents continually chide him for “bringing shame on the family” for every decision he’s made. But who’s fought for them all his life, as he sees it: in ways they know nothing about. Yet who won’t go home to fight the greatest battle of all? The world premiere of Titas Halder’s Foal is directed at the Finborough Theatre by Annie Kershaw till May 30. Halder returns to the Finborough after his debut play Run the Beast Down in 2017 launched his career.
A.K. (Amar Chadha-Patel) both glowers and confides, living on an island, near London. He both rises up winsome at the start yet inhabits savage multitudes: of racists. Throughout the show’s 80 minutes Chadha-Patel often curls his lanky hesitation into a ball of vulnerability: but almost from the start it’s coiled.
For instance the father of A.K.’s once-friend Max who threatened to petrol-bomb the family home because he brought Max to apologise for assault; but A.K. can’t in his turn. Yet Max’s father (unlike A.K’s) is no morally upright citizen but a man of territories, transgression and marking “good” immigrants like A.K.’s opthalmologist father, a doctor; against the “bad”. Even A.K.s father is saddened when he’s told that.
But Halder’s narrative is far more about the punches inside. Chadha-Patel’s superb at the almost-said, internalizing shyness and not speaking the slights and civic outrages that occur, turn him inwards. Almost inside out. It starts when A.K.’s relieved he’s not the boy called Mowgli at school; reserved for a boy darker-skinned than he. It takes a sinister turn when he’s hauled in at the airport as a boy of 14 and searched, never telling his parents he’s now a suspect because of his race. “You’re lucky” security say, as he’s finally dismissed. “People who kill don’t look like me. They look like Max. And his dad. That’s profiling.” Or the racist woman who tells him not to run with a rucksack: indeed she wants to call the police and have hm shot.
It also impacts A.K.’s miraculous befriending by bright and apparently beautiful Katy. Yet somehow Max manages at two key moments to interpose himself and follows A.K. around like a bad omen.
The climactic moments grow naturally out of this. How much later Katy wants to become serious yet A.K. holds back in pain. And learns of the fate of a 13-year-old boy hounded by a gang. Years later when so much seems lost, he hears from an old friend (who’s been given a death threat) of some names and decides to act.
The doppelganger moment is both physically wrought and original. A birth like death, a self writhing out of another’s skin, being literally foaled. The splitting-off of a possible self, one who did all the right things, is the life not lived. Yet this pacific self could not survive if the warrior self had not fought for his space. The paradox, outcome and damage are exquisitely wrought like a half-Nelson expertly delivered. There’s a few jumps and a loose end – A.K. works in the food industry from leaving school. Yet there’s a brief reference to a student loan.
Chada-Patel is an unstoppable force of lyric skirl and gentle ferocity, of pumping force and blank-eyed wonder. The text is often edged with poetry like a pewter lining. It’s mineral-hued, yet writhes. With Cara Evans’s set and costumes the few props like mic (for A.K.’s parents) are used sparingly. As is a singular rising ball of light designed by Rajiv Pattani. An oblong pale wood bench and a sound-system at the back overarch a floor where small puddles of water accrue. Pierre Flasse’s composition and sound design sashays music and occasional natural sounds off. Virtually nothing distracts from the telling.
The Finborough have form with five-star solo shows. This is clearly another flued and sanded with the ferocity of pursuit. Yet pausing to stroke a mastiff on the way out. To care. Outstanding.
Production Manager Nick Flintoff, Assistant Director Jillian Feuerstein, Stage Manager Ciara O’Neill, Casting Becky Paris CDG
Presented by Indira Varma and Hannah Farley-Hills for HFH Productions and Neil McPherson, Production Photography Sari Solinen.
General Manager Tara Marricdale, Assistant General Managers Silvia Verzaro and Jaemin Yu, Assistant Resident Director Jillian Feuerstein, Cover Art Designer, Jillian Feuerstein.
Photos by Steve Gregson
