Theatre Royal Drury Lane

One of theatre’s greatest mysteries is how Disney literally made the most successful musical of all time and then proceeded to learn absolutely nothing from it. Virtuoso director Julie Taymor included all the dumb stuff required by the Mouse in her version of The Lion King – farting warthogs, basically – but nonetheless crafted an audacious and iconic production that departed radically from the aesthetic of the film and is still in theatres today. Subsequent Disney musicals like Aladdin and Frozen aren’t bad, but they take zero risks – effectively just plonking the film onstage – and are not in theatres today. And here comes Hercules, the next in the megacorp’s long line of perfectly adequate, not very imaginative adaptations of its bountiful ’90s animated roster. Book of Mormon director Casey Nicholaw’s production is good looking and high energy. Robert Horn and Kwame Kwei-Armah’s book is appropriately big hearted with a handful of very funny gags. The show’s not-so-secret weapon is the retention of the film’s sassy quintet of singing Muses. Here turbocharged into a full-on gospel group, they’re a whole lot of finger snapping, head shaking, quick-changing fun, and also add a note of character to Alan Menken’s likeable but unremarkable Alan Menken-style score. Hercules is a unit of generic Disney stage entertainment However, the Muses are also symptomatic of the fact that the show’s Ancient Greece comes across as a reskinned small-town America, without having any comment...

This review is from 2019, when Timothy Sheader’s Open Air Theatre production transferred to the Barbican. In summer 2026 it will be restaged at the London Palladium with pop star Sam Ryder in the title role, Tyron Huntley as Judas Iscariot, and the role of Pilot shared by Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Jun 20–Jul 11), Simon Russell Beale (Jul 13-25), Richard Armitage (Jul 27-Aug 1), Boy George (Aug 3-15) and Layton Williams (Aug 17–29) and Julian Clary (Aug 31-Sep 5). Following a break it will transfer to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, with Ryder confirmed to stay on. First seen in 2016 at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, Timothy Sheader’s bombastic revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera arrives at the Barbican with superstar ratings, even if it’s lost some of its, well, superstar turns. It looks incredible: Tom Scutt’s set of rusty girders and a cross-shaped catwalk is moodily, then gloriously, lit by Lee Curran, especially a final, ascending beam of light behind the crucifixion. But the real touchstone is the show’s concert origins: characters swagger around the stage clutching microphones, or moon over acoustic guitars; later, electrical cords are the things they’re bound and hung by. But this staging also allows for rock-god excess, and it’s showered in gold and glitter. Herod is high-camp in a gold cape; Judas’s hands are dipped in silver for all to see, branded guilty by gilt.Drew McOnie’s edgy choreography turns the cast into a mob, whether united in juddering, convulsive...

The Last Ship is about the most British-sounding musical ever: it concerns the decline of the Swan Hunter shipyard in Wallsend, Tyne and Wear. Sounds… absolutely nothing like a Broadway hit, right? Well, yes, but it was written by Gordon Sumner – aka Sting – inspired by his childhood in the northeast and relationship with his ship engineer father. Therefore we’re not really in low-budget, niche appeal territory: very serious attempts were made to make it a Broadway hit, which didn’t really work despite Sting himself stepping into the cast in a (successful but inevitably temporary) effort to boost sales. It finally got a UK production in 2018, which started in Newcastle and toured the UK but never made it to London. Now it’s back in a large scale production that’s hopping around global capitals and stars Sting himself in the lead role of Jackie White and finally makes it to London, settling into Theatre Royal Drury Lane for a couple of weeks. Directed by Leo Warner of 59 Productions (who also design), it features a new book from Barney Norris, though inevitably Sting is the big attraction (and the reason it’s not sticking around town that long).