Make Good: The Post Office Scandal Review
Ed Gaughan as Postman in Make Good: The Post Office Scandal. Photo by Andrew Billington
Written by Charlotte for Theatre and Tonic
Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in exchange for an honest review
Renowned rural touring companies Pentabus and New Perspectives have once again brought forth a new show that pays shining homage to their commitment to nurturing artists and bringing timely and impactful theatre to rural communities across the country. Make Good: The Post Office Scandal is a new musical by Jeanie O’Hare and Jim Fortune inspired by the unbelievable true experiences of hundreds of subpostmasters across the UK whose lives were destroyed by the Horizon scandal. The show is a seamless blend of storytelling and comedy, bold harmonies and quiet reflections, striking a balance between the weight of the tragedy and the humour buried in the absurdity of it all.
Ed Gaugan opens the show as the show’s emcee of sorts, Postman Patrick, whose stand-up soliloquy is equal parts self-deprecation and careful overture of what’s to come; but, at the heart of the story are three subpostmasters: Elsie (Victoria Brazier), Indira (Charlotte Delima), and Mohandas (Samuel Gosrani), each with their own hopes and dreams for their future lives when they signed on the Post Office’s dotted line. As the years drag on and the numbers spit out by the Post Office-issued computers make less and less sense, dread creeps steadily in to the darkening tune of the violin. To put it plainly, not all of Fortune’s songs hit their mark, at times inching toward a juvenile sound and lyricism which feels at odds with the complexity of the narrative. When he does strike the right chord, however, the trio of subpostmasters form a powerful, desperate chorus lamenting ‘if I could grow a money tree... no disgrace would follow me’ to the electric crescendo of the guitar.
One of the most compelling aspects of Make Good is its intentional construction. Touring rural villages across the UK, it is a show built for the kinds of communities where people much like Elsie, Indira, and Mohandas made and lost their livelihoods, and that is evident in every aspect of production. With only four actors and two musicians, the performance never feels lacking in scale, each actor skillfully multi-rolling without ever leaving the audience’s sight. The set, designed by Carla Goodman, is completely self-contained, but lacks no detail. The quaint, recognizable shelves of packing tape and greeting cards at once illuminate in colourful neon, lamps on desk tops flash to the beat, and coat racks at the door quickly become characters. Even beyond clever design, Make Good goes a step further in actively involving the communities it plays in by working with local choirs to add more voices to their call, surpassing simply performing a story of community, but performing a story with community.
Perhaps the clearest mark of Make Good’s success were the numbers of subpostmasters in the audience whose reactions made quite clear how close to home the show hit. One by the name of Sally Lucas, who was happy to have her name shared, was in London for the continued inquiry into the scandal. She tearfully relayed how much the show brought back to the surface and how scarily accurate the deadpan depictions of unhelpful post office support workers were. Around her, others reminisced how their now empty post offices sat in the same villages they still walked through each day, and the importance of this show’s tour to such communities became twice as clear. In a modest theatre in Clapham, it was deeply apparent how vital grassroots theatre is to the artistic ecosystem of the UK, far beyond the borders of London and other urban hubs of theatre, in village halls in quiet towns where stories of pain and hope are vital reflections of the places and people in which these stories live and breathe.
On a UK tour until 1 Dec 2024, further information can be found here.
★★★★
