Review: Pews At Ten, The Space

Rona (Bud Potter), Meryl (Matty Rudd) and Dilys (Nia Brooks, who also wrote the piece) are regulars at St David’s church. The older women have their preferred pew to share, and spend their time gossiping about goings-on in their small Welsh village: the overbearing shop manager and her underling’s plans to quit, and the man at the butcher’s who’s been cheating on his wife – with a man! Soon after we meet them, their normal routines are disrupted in two ways. Firstly, there’s new arrival, David (Dominic Bryant), a young Englishman whose accent they find near-impossible to parse. Then comes even bigger news: Tom Jones – Sir Tom Jones, international pop star and national treasure – is coming to their church. And they only have a few days to prepare.

From the off, Pews at Ten is a comic masterpiece. Each joke (and there are many of them) lands, and the attention to detail is exemplary. At the side of the stage is a church noticeboard dotted with flyers and announcements, and the transition music is choral covers of Tom Jones classics.

It’s clear that this has been an extensively thought-out, well-rehearsed piece, but the material feels anything but stale. It feels natural as the characters speak over one another and chatter, and the physicality of the performers is excellent. Overexaggerated movements and mimes are genuinely funny rather than clunky, and it’s easy to believe the relationships between the characters based solely on how they move together. The cast suffuses each moment with energy, and the characters feel like real people right from their first entrances.

Rather than a pastiche or mockery of the old, the three older women are obviously creations of love, and their antics resonate across generations. If nothing else, Pews at Ten shows that rabid fandom is not something you grow out of. When practising how they will speak to (Sir) Tom Jones, the women enlist David to play dress-up and act as a stand-in for the great man. Their subsequent inability to hold it together is hysterically funny – and Bryant’s commitment to his impression deserves a review all of its own.

Amid the laughs, there are serious moments that have equal resonance. Dilys’ monologue on having never really put herself first is heartbreaking, and a later passage on grief is genuinely touching. It’s a testament to the strength of both the writing and the performances that flitting between these two moods is done so smoothly.

This is a play constructed with love, and it shows. It races along, and it’s sad to see the quartet go as the hour comes to a close. But it also shows great restraint on Brooks’ part – she knows just how to leave the audience wanting more.

Pews at Ten is a ridiculously entertaining show, both in concept and execution. Don’t be surprised when you see this group’s names in lights before the end of the year. Who knows, maybe Tom Jones will drop by a future performance.

Playwright: Nia Brooks
Director: Isabelle Klein
Technician: Phyllida Hickish

Pews at Ten has completed its run at The Space, but will return at The Edinburgh Festival 2026