Snap! – King’s Head Theatre

Snap! continues at the King’s Head Theatre, London until 25 May 2025.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

The best thing in this harmless, rather lightweight little 60-minute show (with music, book and lyrics by David O’Brien, directed by Jack Storm) is the harmony singing.

We get duets, trios and quartets often constructed incrementally. They are both well written and well sung, although on the whole the women sing better than the men.

Two couples cross paths. Tom (Will Usherwood-Bliss) is out of work, a bit low and worrying his partner Angela (Hayley Maybury). Then she meets an old flame, Max (Matteo Giambiasi), who is looking for a model for an advertising campaign with the brief of sexing up, of all things, tea.

Tom gets the job, poses in his underpants with a teapot for lots of the eponymous snapping while Max’s long suffering partner Sheila (Justine Marie Mead) acts as the long suffering studio assistant.

Inevitably there are sexual tensions across the four of them and we end with forgiveness (sort of) and reconciliation (or not).

Mead’s performance stands out for her rich voice which she modulates movingly to connote mood. She also acts her character’s exasperation very convincingly. Max must be impossible to live and work with.

Maybury, a strong soprano, is a fine singer too and her blending in to the group numbers shows a lot of musicality.

Musical director Debbi Clarke is out of sight on keys, although I could see the monitor screen very clearly from my seat, ensuring that all the singing is crisply coherent.

It’s the sort of decent enough show that you quite enjoy while you’re there but will probably have forgotten by the end of the week.

Susan Elkin