Return of the British musical: Six homegrown shows about to take over the West End

You wait all year for one new British musical and six come along at once, says Matt Wolf — it’s showtime!
Matt Wolf27 September 2013

The British musical is back. After Broadway transfers (The Book of Mormon, Once) and revivals of familiar American hits (A Chorus Line, West Side Story), six homegrown shows are about to take over the West End.

It’s too early to tell whether a new Jerry Springer The Opera, Billy Elliot or Matilda The Musical is in among them but the new ones all have an edge — a political scandal as the subject, a reality TV show theme (and Simon Cowell to boot) or a crack creative team — that makes this one of London’s musical moments.

The first to premiere, The Commitments, is already well into previews at the Palace Theatre. Roddy Doyle has adapted his own gritty 1986 novel for the stage, though the material will be familiar to many from Alan Parker’s 1991 film version. The gift of this story is that it follows a pub band who are devoted to soul music and belt out showstopping classics such as Mustang Sally and In the Midnight Hour.

Jamie Lloyd’s production is a rousing tale of working-class life, in which the Commitments try to convert a community of brash Northside Dubliners to their love of soul, and open up their own souls in the process.

The advantage of a musical back catalogue that allows audiences to go in humming the tunes is clear. But what about those shows with the new, as yet untested scores?

For years Andrew Lloyd Webber has bemoaned his sense that he is left to fly a lonely flag when it comes to writing original music for the West End. This time he can’t complain. In December his new musical, Stephen Ward, opens, six weeks or so after From Here to Eternity, the latest from his erstwhile collaborator, Tim Rice, who has teamed up with a so-far unknown composer, Stuart Brayson.

Will the newcomer prove himself the next Lloyd Webber? Time will tell, but he at least signals a new talent for commercial theatre, while Rice’s hand on the tiller as co-producer as well as lyricist ensures expertise.

Some might rush to hasty judgment of Rice’s first new musical in 13 years, accusing it of being yet another film-to-stage transfer. In fact, all those involved with the production at the Shaftesbury Theatre insist that it is James Jones’s hefty 1951 novel of wartime romance in the run-up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor that spawned the musical, and not the Oscar-winning Fred Zinnemann film that came two years later.

Memories of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr getting it on in the surf might encourage some to buy tickets, in any case; though possibly adding a challenge to the new leading couple Darius Campbell (the Pop Idol loser turned West End star) and Rebecca Thornhill.

A few years ago, Lloyd Webber might have been writing Stephen Ward with Rice (the two did team up again briefly to create fresh material for the London Palladium incarnation of The Wizard of Oz). But while Lloyd Webber’s forthcoming musical about the 1963 Profumo affair and the society osteopath who was done in by it has familiar book and lyric partners in Don Black and Christopher Hampton, it’s the directing/producing team on this show that are of special interest.

Time was when director Richard Eyre (director) and Robert Fox (producer) would have been lending their might to a new script from David Hare, so their entry into the Lloyd Webber fold in itself suggests a piece of substance.

The title role as it happens has gone to Alexander Hanson, a London theatre stalwart of both classic plays and musicals, who with this show may finally have landed his breakout role. (He was Catherine Zeta-Jones’s Broadway leading man in A Little Night Music.)

Eyes will be focused too on Charlotte Spencer as Christine Keeler, the showgirl who helped topple a government: the part of Keeler made a star of Joanne Whalley in Scandal, the 1989 film treatment based on the same events, and it could do the same for Spencer here.

It’s the unexpected convergence of talents that is sparking interest in so many of these new musicals. Marianne Elliott was going to direct the ill-fated Spice Girls musical, Viva Forever!, but had a lucky escape. No wonder they wanted her — she continues to confer event status on everything she directs, from War Horse to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Now she is turning her attention to her first musical, The Light Princess.

This is also the debut as a musical theatre composer of Tori Amos, the American singer-songwriter whose own work pulsates with the kind of drama on which theatre thrives. How Amos’s Kate Bush-like ethos will translate to the fluid landscape of a musical populated by aerialists, puppeteers (some of the War Horse team) and a musicals-savvy cast remains to be seen, but Broadway producers will surely be watching.

As they will be when it comes to the December opening at the Almeida of a potential Sweeney Todd for our age in American Psycho. This is the stage musical that many will know from the hair-raising Christian Bale film, adapted from the famously affectless Bret Easton Ellis novel and here directed by Rupert Goold in his first production since taking over the north London playhouse.

Music and lyrics are by Duncan Sheik, who did Spring Awakening, though casting for the defining role of Patrick Bateman, the immaculately groomed murderous Wall Street whizz kid, is yet to be announced.

Come to think of it, one-time EastEnders regular and now West End stage stalwart Nigel Harman might not have been bad in that part, but the Olivier Award-winning star of Shrek is already committed to I Can’t Sing! The X Factor Musical, due in February and an instant contender for the best title of any show. Will it be a commentary on the kitschy excesses of our showbiz age or just another example of it? Time will tell, though the presence in the cast of The Color Purple’s clarion-voiced Cynthia Erivo at least suggests that this cast probably can sing — very well. (There have been too many musicals in recent years with performers who can’t.)

As for the commercial viability of a show whose central character is Simon Cowell, well, let’s just say that the media villain has given the piece his blessing while presumably being pleased that he doesn’t have to show up at the Palladium eight times a week. And with comedian Harry Hill and leading comedy director Sean Foley on board as co-creators, the results could well be smart as well as fun. But a gold-plated hit? Who can say, beyond wishing all these shows their share of the X factor that turns any given week’s opening into an evening you carry with you for years.

Golden tickets: what’s on where

Palace Theatre

Previewing now

National’s Lyttelton

Previewing now

Shaftesbury Theatre

Previews from Mon Sep 30

Almeida Theatre

Previews from Tue Dec 3

Aldwych Theatre

Previews from Tue Dec 3

I Can’t Sing! The X Factor Musical

London Palladium

Previews from Thu Feb 27 2014

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