Writer: Scarlett Smith
The harp is not an instrument that screams Saturday night out. Associated almost exclusively with orchestral formality or the ambient tinkling of hotel lobbies, it tends to occupy a rather narrow lane in the public imagination. Scarlett Smith’s mission, with this cheerful and uneven solo show, is to drag it somewhere altogether more unexpected.
Smith makes the bulk of her living playing at weddings, and Any Objections? is her bid to demonstrate that there is considerably more to her, and to her instrument, than the white marquee circuit might suggest.
Her principal weapon is the loop pedal. Layering recordings of herself in real time, she builds up dense, multi-tracked arrangements from a single harp, conjuring something closer to Ed Sheeran or KT Tunstall in full flight than anything you’d find in the Royal Philharmonic’s back catalogue. It’s genuinely impressive, and at its best, the effect is revelatory: a familiar pop song stripped back and reconstructed through a prism you simply wouldn’t have anticipated. The musical numbers are interlinked with comic set pieces and personal storytelling, Smith casting herself as both virtuoso and entertainer in roughly equal measure.
The slight problem, however, is that the musical sections and the comedy sections feel as though they belong to two rather different shows. Between songs, Smith adopts a children’s entertainer persona: broad, bright, and studiously silly. The instinct to leaven the evening with humour is sound enough, but the register sits awkwardly alongside material that, at its core, is asking to be taken seriously as a new kind of harp performance. When the comedy lands, it lands well. A game show sequence with audience participation finds Smith in her element, the room warm and genuinely engaged. But the delivery is unreliable, and the sillier set pieces too often feel like interruptions rather than extensions of what she is trying to say.
The show’s most telling moment comes right at the end. Introducing her final number, a self-composed piece, Smith explains the philosophy that underpins everything: that the relentless pursuit of success left her exhausted and joyless, and that she chose, deliberately, to prioritise happiness and embrace her own playfulness instead. It’s a lovely thought, and suddenly the children’s entertainer shtick makes complete sense. The trouble is that this framing arrives at the finish line rather than the starting blocks. Had Smith offered it upfront, the audience would have spent the evening understanding what they were watching. Instead, the penny drops just as the lights go down, and you leave thinking: That could have been so much more coherent than it was.
There is real talent here, and a genuinely original idea at the heart of it. Smith’s musicianship is not in question, and when the show clicks into gear, usually with a pedal under her foot and a loop building in the air, it clicks into gear convincingly.
Reviewed on 13 April 2026
