“The title’s kind of ironic,” Grace Petrie tells me, with a chuckle. It’s a bright Monday lunchtime, and the seasoned folk performer and stand-up comedian is already several shows into her new tour, This Is No Time To Panic!. “The overall theme of the show is… actually, this is a time to panic. But I thought nobody would come and see THAT show. Maybe it’s all a bit of a con,” she says, with another wry laugh.
She spent six months writing this, followed by previews and a run at Edinburgh’s Fringe festival, is a heady mix of music, politics, and personal reflection. Now being taken across the country, including dates in Brighton, Twickenham, and at London’s Leicester Square Theatre, this bold new work casts an eye over a world in danger of repeating past mistakes. “It’s about politics, and about the rise of fascist ideologies again, and obviously climate destruction, and the fact that every day we’re bombarded with the news that everything is terrible and we don’t know what we can do about it.”
The Leicester-born singer‑songwriter has created her own space where folk and activism intersect. With a mix of funny, uplifting narratives and thought-provoking songs, she’s breathed new life into a music genre long associated with beards and yearning for a lost love.
Not that I have anything against beards and yearning for a lost love. Some of my friends come into that category. But, Petrie offers a modern form of folk, where traditional values of compassion and togetherness share a stage with practical suggestions on how to confront the issues of today. There’s also plenty of laughs along the way, just to lighten the load if it gets a bit much.
She tells me that debuting This Is No Time To Panic! at Edinburgh Fringe offered a chance to add that final finesse. “It’s like being in a laboratory,” she says. “You’re performing every day there, sometimes twice a day, so you get to perfect these things really quickly. I think it’s really healthy for artists, to be honest.” But it’s not just the relentless schedule that she loves. “It’s all the shows you see up there. It’s such a microcosm of all kinds of different art. I find it a really inspiring environment to be in.”
This sense of finding inspiration in those around, of being part of something larger, seems to be at the heart of Petrie’s work. She says this show is also, broadly speaking, about finding a sense of hope. “That’s an increasingly difficult job as a political artist of 15 years, in which Britain has just gone from worse to worse.”
Her most recent album, last year’s Build Something Better, was produced by Frank Turner and carries her most unapologetically political songs so far. Bjut even when it’s at its most sad or angry, there’s still a suggestion society can come to its senses.
Petrie is acutely aware of the culture of worry and suspicion that pervades modern life. “The system we live in is designed to make us feel like we need to fiercely defend our own tiny little patch, instead of working outwards with other people and making community,” she says. “Not only is the only way to survival through community, but the only way to a joyful, fruitful life is through community. We were put on the Earth to hang out with each other.”
It’s a message that resonates deeply in an age of increasing social fragmentation. Even culture, she argues, has become atomised. “There used to be this idea of shared cultural milestones. I grew up watching Top of the Pops every Friday night, and I knew everyone in my social sphere was watching it too. Now, there’s a million different things to watch, none of them on at the same time. The advance of smartphones and social media just streamlines people further along these cul de sacs, until we’re all in these pretty separate, isolated silos. And I think that’s not a good thing.” Perhaps this is why there are almost shared national stories anymore. We only come together for sports events and royal weddings. Which isn’t much good if you don’t like flags or watching TV.
She’s also critical of political structures that, in her view, increasingly seek to discourage collective action. “The way the current system is set up, it’s massively designed to dissuade people from that kind of ideologically driven journey. It’s set up to make you feel like this is the way it’s always got to be. You can’t change it, you’re only one person, and you’ve got plenty of other things to worry about… your pension, your job, your rent…
“I don’t think that’s an accident. The world as it’s set up is beneficial to a very, very small number of very powerful people. If the majority of us realized how much power we had, through unionization and community, things would change very quickly.”
She tells me most of her shows have feature themes around our attention, both as individuals and communities. “Where are we putting our attention? How are we allowing ourselves to be distracted, diverted, and fractured? If we all collectively focused on the problems we’re facing and how to solve them together… My message is that it’s not too late, but we haven’t got much time to mess around with this anymore. We’ve got to stop deluding ourselves that these things are just going to be resolved on their own.”
For Petrie, live performance is more important than ever. “There’s no substitute for being in the room together and experiencing something communally. After two years of lockdown, where we couldn’t perform or come together, I think that muscle of how to be with each other, how to sing together and laugh together, got quite seized up. Now, it’s more important than ever to go, ‘Yeah, this actually feels amazing to be in a room with other people and to be experiencing one thing together.’ That’s what we were made to do.”
For This Is No Time To Panic!, Petrie is changing things up a bit, nimbly blending two things she excels at - impassioned folk music and stand-up comedy. Fold into this a little bit of mild existential crisis and some practical solutions for clawing our way out of this mess, and it becomes a compelling and vital piece of work. She might be a powerful voice of protest, but one that offers compassion alongside the defiance. It is a complicated world, and people have made some daft choices, but she’s here to suggest a way we can break the old patterns. In a culture that often feels overwhelming, her message is a simple but powerful one. There is an alternative. “There has to be,” she says. “The only way forward is together.”
Grace Petrie brings This Is No Time To Panic! to Brighton’s Komedia on Wed 1 Oct, Twickenham’s The Exchange on Sun 12 Oct, and London’s Leicester Square Theatre on Thu 27 Nov, as part of her 2025 tour.
www.leicestersquaretheatre.com
Image by Fraser West
Keep up to date with latest news, guides and events with the SALT newsletter.