Hit Machine – Soho Theatre 

Noah Galvin and Josh Radnor in Hit Machine at the Soho Theatre, London. Picture: Bautista Araya

Hit Machine continues at the Soho Theatre, London until 15 August 2026.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

As interesting as visits to the Soho Theatre consistently are, pre-performance the foyer always has the distinct aura of organised chaos as the audiences mingle pre-show with casual drinkers, while the house only opening five minutes before curtain up on the early production hardly helps matters.

Once you’ve battled your way to your seats though, this venue rarely lets you down, Jonathan Coren’s intriguing piece Hit Machine – more a play with music than a musical – proving an interesting enough 75 minutes.

Presented by Spiral Stairs Entertainments in association with Kater Gordon and the Soho Theatre, this engaging, unpredictable tale of two brothers “born from the same wound”, is expertly played out by Josh Radnor (Wes) and New Yorker, Noah Galvin (Alex) with fine support from Khalil Madovi as wannabe rap star, Defy the Leader.

Wes is the successful record producer, with all the luxury trimmings including a supposedly very smart luxury apartment even though the DFS lookalike sofas on set look more 1970s sitcom than the sort of place a high-net-worth individual would live. His younger brother Alex, played with angst, humour and visible vulnerability by Galvin, is the one with the natural musical talent and creativity that his older sibling can’t match.

All he does, he admits, is “fix things”. Constantly on his mobile doing deals and, you sense, firefighting his way through life, materially Wes has made it. “How can you be wrong when all this money says you’re right,” comments Alex, looking around the swish apartment.

Enter Madovi as the rapper looking for advice, creative guidance and a song that will break him into the big time. Much to his brother’s irritation, it’s Alex he turns to, having listened to some of his ‘work in progress’ tracks. Fraternal friction is constantly just below the surface and it’s not long before family skeletons get dragged out of the closet to damaging effect. When a fight finally ensues between them it’s clear the family scars will take a lifetime to heal, if they ever will.

At just an hour and a quarter, to use some vinyl vernacular, this makes for a tasty seven-inch recording, directed by Daniel Bailey (original music by Ben Harper). Stretched out to 12 inches, this may have proved a few creative grooves too many to maintain the attention.

The icing on this theatrical cake is the rap finale by Defy, a good old-fashioned crowd-pleaser which even any non-fans of the musical genre can thoroughly enjoy, even if there’s a danger his high-octane performance at the end steals some of the limelight from both Radnor and Galvin. That would be a shame.

Derek Smith