The Kings Head Theatre Pub

While at the Edinburgh festival this year we went to see a parody of the musical Hamilton based on the F1 life of Lewis Hamilton, something that has obviously been begging to be done. If you were an F1 nut, as I am, you’d have greatly enjoyed the pastiche. it was a very accurate portrayal of both Hamilton’s life and the principal people around him, namely Fernando Alonso, Ron Dennis and Nicole Scherzinger.

From Edinburgh the show transferred to London to a theatre called The Kings Head Theatre. This is wholly unremarkable except for the fact that the theatre is at the back of a pub.

As part of the promotion for the transferal the theatre were offering up five pairs of tickets to the show. So I entered and I won a pair!

So I set off with my son as my plus one and not sure really what to expect. The pub turns out to be olde worlde and it is tiny, probably no more than ten tables around an ‘u’ shaped bar. On the wall are theatre posters and photos from what looks like previous performances in the theatre b some famous alumni.

We’d booked a table online but that didn’t really seem to have worked and came as a bit of a surprise to the bar staff, however, there was a table free and no airs and graces were needed for my scotch egg and (posh) cheese toastie!

We arrived about an hour before the performance and immediately went to pick up our tickets from the tiny “box office”. Rather than the usual paper tickets these were laminated and you handed them back on entry. This was a money saving exercise, more of which later.

About 10 minutes from the show time the place suddenly became packed. I’m not sure if this was with people for the show or for the pub but there certainly wasn’t much room to manoeuvre when it came time to make our way to the theatre.

Initially we thought that this must be down the stairs under the pub but that was just the slightly grim toilets. Turns out that the theatre is actually behind the bar area and you enter through a side door to reveal a 110 seat theatre with a stage smaller than that in Edinburgh.

Before the show itself started there was a heartfelt plea from the manager to donate as “even if every show was full all year they would still be £110,000 short each year”. He also made the point that unlike other places they pay the equity rate to actors and other staff. Alex and I looked at each other and felt guilty that we didn’t have much to give.

The show itself was just as good as it had been the first time round and I still thoroughly recommend it, especially if you are a Formula 1 fan. As for the theatre I would be tempted to go up again for the right show but it would have to be short as it was cramped, uncomfortable and hot in there but great fun.