London musicals

This long-gestating musical version of ‘Back to the Future’ is so desperate to please that the producers would doubtless offer a free trip back in time with every ticket purchase if the laws of physics allowed…

Brace yourself for a shock: ‘South Park’ creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Broadway-munching musical is a big-hearted affair that pays note-perfect homage to the sounds and spirit of Broadway’s golden age.

A labour of love that has worked its way slowly to the West End over the five years since it debuted at Southwark Playhouse, at its best Jethro Compton’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is an extraordinary thing, a soaring folk opera that overwhelms you with a cascade of song and feeling.

The Devil Wears Prada had me flummoxed. It is an adaptation of the 2006 millennial classic about a mousy young journalism graduate who blunders into the job of PA to a tyrannical, Anna Wintour-alike fashion editor. The songs are by none other than Elton John, with lyrics by Shania Taub and Mark Sonnenblick. The director-choreographer is Broadway veteran Jerry Mitchell. There’s some serious talent involved. And yet being turned into a musical does… almost nothing for it.

What a long, strange trip it’s been. Indie-folk musician Anaïs Mitchell’s musical retelling of the Orpheus story began life in the mid-’00s as a lo-fi song cycle – going through the next 14 years blow-by-blow would be time-consuming, but in short thanks to what I can only describe as THEATRE MAGIC, Hadestown is now a full-blown musical directed by the visionary Rachel Chavkin, its success as a show vastly outstripping that of the record.

Okay, let’s just get this out of the way. ‘Hamilton’ is stupendously good…

The imminent arrival of new Stephen Sondheim musical is a furiously exciting and sadly never to be repeated experience and what a coup for Rufus Norris to score it as the centrepiece of his final season running the NT. 

Occupying the gap left by the mighty Frozen at the huge Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Hercules is a fascinating choice of Disney film for the megacorp to adapt as its new stage musical…

If you’re in the market for sexy rearrangements of AOR smashes combined with a hagiographic account of Bob Geldof’s Band Aid and Live Aid projects, then boy are you going to love ‘Just for One Day’, which transfers to the West End after success at the Old Vic in 2024.

The National Theatre’s extraordinary verbatim musical returns for a very limited run as part of Rufus Norris’s final season in charge of the iconic venue.