Theatre Royal Drury Lane

Sam Ryder is not the Messiah. But he did come second for the UK in Eurovision, which places him close in some people’s eyes. And you can see the logic of casting him as the lead in a splashy summer revival of Jesus Christ Superstar. Though he wasn’t born until almost 20 years after Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s musical theatre romp debuted, Ryder’s eclectic, guitar heavy pop should theoretically position him well to front this loveably mercurial rock opera.  And with all due caveats re: the fact he’s clearly not Middle Eastern, he also looks a bit like Jesus, or at least popular Western depictions of Jesus, which is at least mildly qualifying, surely.  Can’t act though, can he? Well, maybe that’s unfair. He can act a bit. It’s not horrible for a stage debut. But it’s not really lead-actor-at-the-Palladium stuff either. This production actually started 10 years ago at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park, where star Declan Bennett didn’t look a thing like classic Jesus, but had brooding charisma to spare, a troubled man struggling to accept his fate and the difficult questions being asked of him by his relentless frenemy Judas.  Ryder by contrast looks like a mildly perturbed middle manager distracted by some tricky mental arithmetic. A lot of Timothy Sheader’s production involves Jesus listening to Tyrone Huntley’s wiry, street rat Judas and looking conflicted while not saying anything. Bennett aura farmed the hell out of this. Ryder does not have the chops.  The...

Here we go: a full decade after Disney’s PT Barnum musical biopic The Greatest Showman became an unexpectely massive global smash in its original, Hugh Jackman-starring film incarnation, the stage musical is finally with us. The fact it wasn’t one already is perhaps slightly surprising: it’s rare a musical starts its life on screen these days, and during the ten years it’s taken to rework Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s songs for the stage there has been a resurgence for the 1980 musical Barnum – also about the 19th century circus impressario’s colourful life – and long-running success for Come Alive!, a circus show set to the songs of The Greatest Showman (which will seemingly run in tandem with the new musical). In 2027 the real deal finally comes to London, as following a 2026 tryout in Bristol, London gets The Greatest Showman before Broadway. It remains an essentially US production, mind: Amercian songswriters Pasek and Pail are back with their hugely popular old songs plus some brand new ones; book writer Tim Federle is American; director-choreographer Casey Nicholaw is American. The cast are Brits, though, or at least European, as Oliver Tompsett reprises his Bristol role as PT Barnum and Samantha Barks his wife Charity Barnum, alongside Ben Joyce as Phillip Carlyle, Vajèn van den Bosch as Jenny Lind and Malinda Parris as Lettie Lutz. It would also seem to feature acrobats – precisely how circussy it is exactly we’ll find out in spring 2027. Tickets will go on sale at...