Woody Sez: The Life & Music of Woody Guthrie (Underbelly Boulevard Soho)

Last Updated on September 11, 2026

The music of American folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie is beautifully brought to life by a small multitalented cast, and remains more relevant now than ever

Imagine a time when ordinary people are beset by unemployment, economic uncertainty and the rising cost of living. Where the world seems balanced on the knife edge of war.  Where catastrophic environmental events devastate farming communities and threaten food security. Where the gap between those with power and wealth and those struggling to get by keeps getting wider.  Where established politics are viewed with mistrust and migrants are forced to leave their homes to seek livelihoods elsewhere. Sound like the evening news 2026, doesn’t it? Well it’s also a fair description of the 1930s and 1940s American that singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie inhabited. It is this world that informed much of his music that makes up the show Woody Sez: The Life and Music of Woody Guthrie and allows it to retain its relevance today.

Woody Guthrie is widely regarded as the founding father of modern American folk music, credited with transforming folk music from traditional ballads into a social protest vehicle, telling the stories of the downtrodden workers, migrants and poor working class Americans. From 1930 to 1956 he was incredibly prolific, documenting through song his personal experience of events including the Great Depression; the USA’s so-called dust bowl years; World War II; and the immediate post-war period. His music has directly influenced some of the greatest singer-songwriters America has produced including Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.  And on this side of the Atlantic, national treasure Billy Bragg has not only been influenced by Guthrie but has even set Guthrie’s unpublished lyrics to music and recorded the three “Mermaid Avenue” albums with Wilco.  

Woody Sez takes its name from a regular newspaper column that Guthrie wrote from 1939 for the California-based labour newspaper People’s World.   He wrote colloquially about the lives of migrant workers, ordinary people, economic hardship and social justice issues, mixing observation, humour, politics, storytelling and personal reflection – much like a modern blog post.  Originally created by David Lutken, the show premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2007 and draws on Guthrie’s autobiographical novel ‘Bound for Glory’ as well as his, letters, diary entries and excerpts from his newspaper column. The result is an absorbing   music-led portrait of one of America’s defining voices in folk music. Following a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe 2026, Woody Sez returns to the London stage for the first time in over a decade for a short run at the Underbelly Boulevard Theatre in Soho.

Rather than being a “traditional musical”, the show is a musical biography with spoken interludes. In a theatre this intimate without microphones – let alone a backing band – there really is nowhere for musical missteps to hide.  But Lutken (who has played Guthrie in the vast majority of performances over the show’s 19 year life) and an astonishingly talented cast of multi-instrumentalist actor-singers (David Finch, Nyssa Grant, and Raquel Chavez) do not put a foot wrong. The full cast are on stage throughout and weave around each other on the small stage as effortlessly as they move between narration, character acting, playing instruments and singing in harmony. Each cast member plays at least four or five instruments including various different types of acoustic guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, harmonica, upright bass, autoharp, dulcimer, pennywhistle and a kazoo. There is even a wonderful moment when David Finch uses a pair of teaspoons as percussion instruments. Even if you have a heart of stone and are left cold by Guthrie’s songs, the sheer musical talent of the cast alone is worth the price of the ticket!

But the songs definitely are the star of the show and for an artist whose career was all too short, Guthrie was certainly prolific. Born in Oklahoma in 1912, he endured much personal hardship and tragedy as a child and experienced the economic devastation of the Dust Bowl in Texas after his family moved there. Like many others, he later moved to California in search of a better life but found that economic migrants were no more welcome in 1930s California than they are on the beaches of Kent today. His upbringing and travels through America as well as experiences in the merchant navy during WW2 exposed him to the downtrodden, disenfranchised and marginalised working class about whom he ended up writing hundreds of songs in the 1940s and 50s.  One of the first in the show is the wonderful “Bound For Glory” performed by the full cast with foot-stomping gusto and verve.  Other songs are sung a verse at a time but scattered at various points throughout the show as Guthrie’s life story unfolds, “The Ballad of Tom Joad” being the most notable one.  

Many of the songs strike a deep emotional chord, including “Curly Headed Baby” which in the show is linked to the death of Guthrie’s daughter; and “I ain’t got no home in this world any more” which might have been written today about people displaced by war, climate change or economic collapse. But the song that moved me to tears was “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)”, written about a plane crash in Los Gatos Canyon, California in 1948. The crash killed all 32 people on board – 4 American crew and 28 migrant Mexican workers being deported back to Mexico – but only the 4 Americans were named in newspaper reports at the time.  The nameless Mexicans were referred to merely as “deportees”. Guthrie’s outrage at the inherent racism and “othering” of the Mexicans in this reporting moved him to write the song.  And although it was written almost 80 years ago, it is hard not to draw parallels with recent newspaper reports about nameless drowned “migrants” who die each year trying to reach the shores of Europe.    

But the paradox of Guthrie’s music is that despite the serious and often emotionally weighty subject matter, the songs retain a jaunty lightness and optimism.  Both the spoken dialogue and the songs speak volumes about Guthrie’s deep humanity: his compassion, inquisitiveness, resilience, hopefulness and sly humour.  And Lutken’s love for the source material illuminates the entire show.  The rest of the cast by turns play Guthrie’s mother, daughter, sister, friends, and various radio station managers, alarmed at Guthrie’s unscripted socialist-leaning asides on live radio! Props are minimal but the cast deftly evokes the various people and communities that Guthrie moved among and that shaped his life and world views.  The final song is probably also Guthrie’s most famous: “This Land is Your Land”, written as an anthem for the working class after he became frustrated with the patriotic pomp of “God Bless America”. Coming at the end of the show and viewed in the context of Guthrie’s life and opinions, the song and its insistence that the land belongs to the people and not the government or the elite resonates afresh. Complete with an audience singalong, it provides a raucous and uplifting climax to an outstanding show.

The cast work together like a well-oiled machine and complement each other very well vocally.  Lutken’s voice has a sweetness to it that is perfect for Guthrie’s songs while Grant and Chavez’s soprano and alto harmonise wonderfully.  It was impressive to see none of the cast using any sort of amplification – obviously only possible on such a small theatre but impressive nonetheless.  The show strikes a wonderful balance between the gentle humour, appetite for joy, hardship, tragedy and restlessness that characterised Guthrie’s life and shaped his music and writing. While Hollywood was making movies like Casablanca, South Pacific and Sunset Boulevard, Guthrie was telling the stories of working class Americans whose hardscrabble lives could not be further from the classic idea of the American Dream. But the songs remain hopeful, optimistic and resilient – much like Guthrie himself who died at only 55 from Huntington’s disease.

This heartfelt show is a rare treat for fans of Guthrie’s music, of which there were many in the audience. But even for those who come to the show with little or no knowledge of Guthrie’s music, the talent of the performers and the catchiness of the songs will be an excellent gateway into Guthrie’s music (and American folk music as a genre). Woody Sez is a finely drawn musical portrait of one of the great balladeers of American music and an excellent showcase of musicianship.  And for songs written 80 years ago, the themes resonate today as strongly as they did when Guthrie wrote them.

Woody Sez runs from 8th – 19th September at the Underbelly Boulevard Soho. Run time is 1h20m (no interval). Tickets are available here and start fron £16.50. As an added bonus on Thursday 17th Sept immediately after the show, audience members are invited to join the cast in the theatre bar for a hootenanny (an informal jam session where you can sing and performa along with the cast). Participation is free – all you have to do is bring your insstrument!

Underbelly Boulevard Soho
6 Walker’s Court
Soho
London
W1F 0BT

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