Heart Wall | Bush Theatre

The Sun Inn has opened its doors at the Bush Theatre to bustling, boozy theatre goers through the promising guise of Heart Wall, a new play by Kit Withington.

Starting the night with on stage karaoke, open to all audience members, promises the audience a fun, exciting, camp time at the theatre, yet this promise is ultimately broken through a long, repetitive exploration of how grief affects us in different ways.

Heart Wall certainly manages to carry some heart throughout, with Olivia Forrest delivering a stellar performance as Charlene, with comedic timing that is on absolute point. Katie Greenall also brings some interesting and striking directorial images and decisions through this piece; trying to use her clearly strong skill set to bring some life into the show. And Rowan Robinson brings a charismatic energy to the complex character of Frankie. Yet unfortunately, these highs cannot outweigh the lows the piece provides.

We are immediately bought into The Sun Inn, seemingly a community pillar, even if there is only ever a maximum of three people in the pub at any given time. The pub is built into a beautiful set by Hazel Low, which carries striking real life resemblance and represents the realistic nature of the piece fantastically, yet the pub being the entire show's background feels contradictory, as Heart Wall is clearly trying trying to tell a story of family and the meaning of home rather than the local community in the pub.

As the pub setting can infer, there is a strikingly British commodity to the piece. The show is successful in feeling like a quintessential British soap - but unfortunately it lands more like an extended filler episode of one. There was a jumble of arguments, conflict and overarching grief that affected all characters; yet it was extremely difficult to feel any empathy as all the characters were deeply selfish, immature and rude to each other.

Valentine, charmingly portrayed by Aaron Anthony, was the only character who seemed to consistently be a voice of any reason or humanity; every other character was rooted in an un-likability that left no room to root for them as an audience, other than Charlene who won audiences over with her charm up until her rather bitter end.

Withington has a strong comedic voice as a playwright, successfully garnering many chuckles from the crowd, however, there was an imbalance that struck a negative chord. The first half felt comedic and toyed around with the thought of grief, and the other half was much less comedic, much heavier and strikingly direct with the grief; creating jarring consistency and pacing.

Dialogue was also heavily repeated throughout, with every scene containing at least two “oh do you remember this...” moments whenever one character wanted to break the other’s confidence, psyche or heart at any moment. This consistent repetition made the piece begin to feel more like a karaoke night that plays the same song ten times in one session.

Whilst there are glints of some really tender moments and the show ends on a gorgeous image, there are some clear pacing and development issues that need to be tackled in a clean up before we see The Sun Inn open up shop once again in the future.

Heart Wall plays at the Bush Theatre until 16th May 2026 - tickets and more information can be found here.

★★☆☆☆ (2*)

Gifted tickets in return for an honest review | Photography by Harry Elletson