Annabel Smith, Isabel Butt, Erika Poole, Gigi Zahir and Henry Miller make up the company of What Would Jarvis Do?, Laura Grillo’s Britpop-haunted comedy, which runs at the Omnibus Theatre in Clapham from 6-16 October.
Two sold-out development performances left a question hanging over a pair of yellow corduroy trousers. The answer now gets a two-week run: What Would Jarvis Do? is back at the Omnibus Theatre from 6-16 October, and the full company has been announced. The dates were confirmed earlier this month.
Annabel Smith plays Didi and Isabel Butt plays GG, the two Jarvis Cocker super-fans who empty their pockets for the trousers. Smith’s credits include The Shitheads at the Royal Court and The Upstart Crow at the Gielgud and the Apollo. Butt trained at Rose Bruford and was in the play’s first outing at the Omnibus.
Erika Poole is Ms Lacy, the wildly unconventional therapist who puts the trousers up for auction in the first place. Poole’s credits include Beauty and The Beast and Shoot Me In The Heart for Told By An Idiot, and What It Feels Like For A Girl for BBC Three.
The strangers Didi and GG meet along the way are played by Henry Miller, as Mister, and Gigi Zahir, as Christopher. Miller’s credits include Othello at Basingstoke Theatre and Line of Duty for the BBC. Zahir was nominated for Best Newcomer at the 2023 UK Pantomime Awards for Cinderella at Theatre Royal Stratford East, and has also appeared in Rifco’s Frankie Goes To Bollywood on tour and at the Southbank Centre.
Laura Grillo wrote the play, drawing on her own experience of sudden loss during lockdown and on the Britpop records that got her through it. It is billed as an absurdist black comedy. The hunt for the genuine trousers turns into an odyssey of eccentric strangers, impossible coincidences and the creeping sense of having been here before.
Maiya Pascouche directs, with Ella Dale producing for Laura Grillo Productions. Sound design is by FREW, set and costume design by Georgie Lynch-Bailey and lighting design by Laurel Marks. The run is supported by Arts Council England.
There is a warm-up event before any of it opens. The Memory Lounge takes over Bobby Fitzpatrick at 273 West End Lane, NW6 1QS, on 24 September – part listening lounge, part social gathering, part installation, with sleeping bags, dressing-up clothes, old photographs, magazines and personal mementos laid out to trigger memories of guests’ own. A 1990s Britpop soundtrack runs through the evening before DJ J Hellfire takes over, disposable cameras record the night for a growing archive, and everyone leaves with a party bag. It is the first of a planned series.
What Would Jarvis Do? runs at the Omnibus Theatre, 1 Clapham Common Northside, from Tuesday 6 October to Friday 16 October 2026, with press night on Wednesday 7 October. Performances are at 7.30pm Tuesday to Saturday, 2.30pm on Saturday and 4pm on Sunday. The play runs 80 minutes without an interval, carries an age guidance of 14+, and tickets start at £20.
