Review: MANIC STREET CREATURE, Kiln Theatre

Johan Persson

Maimuna Memon, fresh off her Olivier win for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical in 2025, takes to the stage in a decidedly less supporting role with this nearly-sung-through musical, detailing a relationship built through music and besieged by bipolar disorder. It’s a one-act anecdotal reflection - sometimes giddy, sometimes angry, often sad - on the intricate difficulties of dating someone with a severe mental illness. It will speak directly to hopefully few, but will no doubt capture many. 

Memon, playing Ria, is new in town. She introduces herself and her situation through a very familiar opening number in which she moves from small-town Lancashire to smoggy, exciting Camden. She’s here to chase her dreams, of course, and almost immediately falls into an intense and co-dependent relationship with another musician: Daniel. Dan’s mental illness soon begins to weigh heavy, and even when he stabilises through a prescription, that’s not an easy fix either…

This production is reworked and stretched out from the hour that was a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe. It retains all of the easy regaling, catchy tunes and emotional punches of the original version, but doesn’t feel like it adds a lot more. With the exception, that is, of Ria’s one-sided relationship with her absent father’s voicemail, which allows for another secondary character arc to be satisfyingly concluded in the final act. Though much of the time passes without a lot of action, the show doesn’t drag, rather the audience is happy to float along from one twangling song to another, carried on Memon’s stupendous vocal performance, with the sense of impending doom sewn in from about Track 4. 

Libby Watson’s cosy set design makes the large space feel lived-in, but potentially overcrowds what is already a claustrophobic story. Jessica Hung Han Yun’s lighting design blasts one moment the twinkles the next, accentuating Ria’s feelings rather than expositing them, and makes the experience more theatrical than its concert-like roots. The musicians (Rachel Barnes, Sam Beveridge and Harley Johnston) are brilliant, a fluid accompaniment of encouragement that moves from instrument to instrument with barely a ripple, adding life to Ria’s raw isolation. Kirsty Patrick Ward directs with precision, but with enough natural ease to allow Memon’s performance to do most of the talking. 

Manic Street Creature is a very stirring piece of theatre. It plays to the audience’s emotional receptors rather than striving for great, untouchable poetry. It is intimate, occasionally awkward, upsettingly predictable and crucially very vulnerable. It is sold and sold again with each song due to Memon’s powerhouse of expression, and even if overstated occasionally, it’s impossible not to feel moved by her evident pain. It’s a subject rarely explored but that increasingly happens, and the catharsis in the theatre was palpable when Memon took her final tear-streaked bow, grateful for having engaged in this collaborative act of healing. 

Intimate and enlightening, and packed full of feeling.

**** Four stars

Reviewed by: Oli Burgin

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