Review: REMYTHED at the King’s Head Theatre

If you’ve ever found yourself side-eyeing a dusty old myth and thinking, hang on… where are all the queer people, Remythed is there for you. This punchy, high-energy show takes those familiar legends we half-remember from school, turns them inside out, and rebuilds them with boldness, brains, and a solid dose of irreverence.

It’s not just a modern update – this is about reclaiming space. Stories like Anansi the Spider and Scheherazade aren’t just polished up for a Gen Z audience, they’re pulled apart, interrogated, danced through, laughed with, and stitched back together with queerness at the centre, where it arguably always belonged.

The inventiveness on display is pretty relentless. One minute you’re swept up in a grand retelling of a mythic court scene, the next you’re watching a surreal, physical-theatre sequence that wouldn’t be out of place in a very cool drama school showcase (and I mean that as a compliment). The tone swings from cheeky to poignant and back again, but it somehow manages to keep you right there with it.

And the cast is electric. The five performers (Emile Clarke, Ishmael Kirby, Roann Hassani McCloskey, Joel Samuels, and Lucy Roslyn) shapeshift their way through more characters than you can count, with slick timing and real connection. They’re clearly having a blast, and that energy is infectious, and there’s this great sense of trust on stage, like they’re building the show together in front of you, and you’re in on it.

Interestingly, there’s no director listed, and actually, you don’t miss one. The devised structure works; it gives the show a kind of joyful looseness so it feels like a group of artists saying exactly what they want to say, the way they want to say it. That might mean things get a bit scrappy around the edges now and then, but it never loses sight of its message – that stories matter, and who tells them matters even more.

Visually, it’s kept simple – no bells and whistles – but the storytelling more than carries it. It’s theatre made with heart, not budget, and that’s kind of the point.

So no, Remythed isn’t a neat, tidy piece of theatre, but that’s not what it’s going for. It’s messy in places, and loud, and playful, and unapologetically itself, which feels entirely right for a show about queerness, myth, and rewriting the rules.

If you get a chance to catch it, do. It’s theatre that knows exactly who it is, and it leaves you wanting to hear more of the stories we’ve been missing.

More of this sort of thing, please.

Remythed is touring until 11^th July, and more information can be found here: https://www.betnlev.co.uk/