Review: BROS, Pleasance Theatre

Full disclosure: entering the theatre and seeing on the show’s publicity that someone else from the Everything Theatre team reviewed this play in 2025 and awarded it five stars sets up an uneasy set of expectations. I deliberately did not read that review beforehand, but I find it interesting that I have also felt the power of this well-written piece, but in a different way.

The premise is simple: a boys’ night in is not going terribly well. Will has the beers in, the living room is ready, and the invitations have gone out, but one by one the excuses arrive. In the end only Mouser turns up. What begins with nicknames, lager, insults and play fighting gradually becomes something altogether more exposing. As the absent friends accumulate, so too do the ghosts these two men have spent time avoiding.

Written and performed by Iona Champain and Matilda McCarthy, BROS describes itself as a look at modern masculinity and male friendship. I feared the worst: men cannot communicate, feelings are suppressed, banter disguises pain, inevitable consequences follow. Yet there is nothing formulaic or judgemental in its examination of men. Instead, Champain and McCarthy have written something empathetic, insightful and, for me at least, deeply moving.

Is this because it’s not written by men? Fringe theatre is often autobiographical or self-reflective; the writer-performer mines personal experiences for debut performances. These writers have had to dig deeper. It has paid off. Their characters never feel like specimens being examined from outside. 

Whether it is equally important that Will and Mouser are played by women is more difficult to answer. It’s deliciously subversive of course, and Champain and McCarthy are convincing. It creates humour too, though not to the extent that we mock the men when it matters most, and that skill is important to recognise. 

Generally, the humour is less convincing and more incidental to how these men communicate, but I alone roared with laughter at a line about bending spoons.  It was such a keenly observed take on an outlet for male pain at such a crucial moment that the juxtaposition rendered it equally hilarious and devastating. 

The star here is the writing, which gets better as the play gets darker. The opening necessarily deals in recognisable signifiers of male friendship, but Champain and McCarthy peel those away with remarkable control. Emotional cadences are controlled with serious care. Serious subjects are sometimes opened up by little more than a single carefully chosen word. A tiny detail suddenly illuminates an entire piece of history between these men without the script stopping to explain it. Even more impressive is the confidence to say nothing at all. Hana Pascal Keegan‘s direction understands the potency of silence, a rare skill in a short play.  

Elsewhere, the production is much less polished. This is stripped-back studio theatre: a sofa, a handful of props and costumes that occasionally have the slightly makeshift quality of a dressing-up box. The sound design is functional rather than immersive, and I can’t recall a lighting change, but I really don’t think it matters here. 

BROS takes a subject that could very easily have become simplistic, worthy or clichéd and instead finds enormous tenderness within it. It doesn’t judge men who find it hard to talk, but shows us why sometimes they can’t and the serious and devastating effects of their silence.

Written & Produced by Iona Champain and Matilda McCarthy
Directed & Dramaturged by Hana Pascal Keegan
Assistant Director, Movement Director & Fight Director Alexander Uzoka
Music by Crea Sullivan
Designed by Liv Jackson
Costume by Rosa Nasr-Butler

BROS plays at Pleasance Theatre until Saturday 10 October 2026.