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Originally known as ‘Nurse Matilda’ in British author Christianna Brand’s original ’60s children’s books, you may recognise the name Nanny McPhee from the brace of Emma Thompson-starring films about a magical Victorian nanny who flits between unruly families, gradually becoming less and less ugly as she solves their problems.
Following Nanny McPhee (2005) and Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010), Thompson – who wrote the screenplays as well as playing McPhee – had hoped to make a third film, and while that never came to be, a West End musical has been in the works for some years now (it was originally announced in 2018).
Finally it looks to be coming our way in 2027: we don’t have a venue or exact dates yet, but we’re told it will in the summer, and we have a full creative team led by Thompson as writer and Katy Rudd – who has a great pedigree in magical realist West End hits, notably The Ocean at the End of the Lane and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry – as director.
Although it’s Thompson’s baby, don’t go looking for her to reprise the title role (she’s barely performed on stage since 1990), but her presence in the background should provide a little shot in the arm for a tilt at the family musicals market that perennially occupied by Disney shows.
The plot sounds like it’s basically that of the first film, as the catastrophically unruly Brown family is slowly brought to heel my the mysterious McPhee’s inscrutable ways.
Nanny McPhee joins Disney’s The Greatest Showman and the Barbican’s revival of Sunday in the Park with George in what’s shaping up to be a busy 2027 for West End musicals.
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