Beyonce - Stop Punching Robbie

39658 original

Nursery school teaching is, apparently, an occupation fraught with dangers. Beyonce - Stop Punching Robbie’s creator and sole actress, Cecilia Delatori, who used to teach in a chaotic East London school, knows this better than most. She’s turned her experiences into an amusing one-woman theatrical comedy.

We see struggling nursery school teacher Janice recount the many trials and tribulations of working at George Galloway nursery in Bethnal Green. The kids are manic and often astonishingly violent; she’s constantly being outshone by the imperious new teacher of Class Purple; an innocent field trip turns into ‘Black Tuesday’, where kids get lost and anarchy reigns in the museum gift shop.

Delatorri gives a confident performance as a woman coming apart without straying too far into self-pity and always maintaining a humorous edge. Her classroom scenes are a real highlight, where she succeeds in individually creating a host of interesting characters without the support of additional actors onstage.

However, the production is pretty sparse. With nothing more than a chair on stage alongside the star the show feels, at times, like a stand up comedy routine with a plot attached. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing, but the jokes never seem to descend into outright hilarity. It’s well-executed comedy that will have you chuckling throughout, yet it lacks a certain edginess that might propel it towards real comedic success.