I just returned from a few whirlwind days of theatergoing in London, and by a fortunate quirk of scheduling, was able to see four of the most popular and critically acclaimed British musicals of the past few years. None of them, so far as I know, have plans to come to Broadway — or, I would guess, are very likely to. It’s the theater world’s version of the old bromide: England and America are two countries divided by a common language.
Standing at the Sky’s Edge, which ran a year ago at the National Theatre and won the Olivier Award (London’s equivalent of the Tony) for Best Musical, has just reopened on the West End, where I caught an early preview. Set in Sheffield, the British steelmaking city, the show revolves around the Park Hill housing development, that city’s innovative effort to provide affordable housing for working-class families. It was a utopian dream of urban renewal, both hailed and reviled for its brutalist architecture, that thrived in the 1960s, was decimated by economic hard times in the ‘70s and ‘80s, before getting a new lease on life in the 2000s.
The show has a warm heart and admirable social-reformist sympathies. But, for this American viewer, it was unsatisfying. Chris Bush’s book does relatively little to dramatize the social forces behind the rise and fall of Park Hill, preferring to focus on the fairly mundane, soapy dramas of three Park Hill households: a young couple whose marriage hits the rocks; a multigenerational family of Liberian immigrants; and a single woman trying to escape a bad breakup with her lesbian partner. Richard Hawley, formerly of the Brit band Pulp, has contributed a good rock score, but too many of the numbers are static, anthemlike solos, delivered by characters center stage to the audience. All in all, the show seems too parochial and dramatically half-baked to have much resonance for American theatergoers.
Sheffield, coincidentally, is also the setting for Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, which had a hit three-year run on the West End, before closing because of Covid, and has just returned in a new production headed for a yearlong U.K. tour. Based on a 2011 BBC documentary about a 16-year-old Sheffield boy whose career dream is to be a drag queen, it’s a feel-good show with a peppy but forgettable pop score (by newcomer Dan Gillespie Sells) and a relentlessly sunny vibe that I found vaguely annoying.
The trouble is, aside from one obligatory school bully and an estranged father with outdated notions of masculinity, Jamie’s journey from classroom confessional to bucking a school edict by wearing a dress to the school prom is a far too easy glide path to self-affirmation. The show has had a U.S. production at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles, but no sign of a Broadway transfer. Which is not surprising; at a time when Broadway is awash with cross-dressing actors, nonbinary Tony winners, and transgender chic, Jamie seems a little naive and old-fashioned.
Two shows I liked much better, meanwhile, face a different set of hurdles. I had heard and read much about the new immersive production of Guys and Dolls, directed by Nicholas Hytner at the Bridge Theatre. And I was not disappointed. With much of the audience milling about on the performance floor, as scenes pop up on platforms raised and lowered around them, the classic musical has been expertly rejuvenated, with unflagging energy, neon-bright visuals, and singing that makes every one of the great Frank Loesser numbers feel fresh.
But will New Yorkers ever see it? I’m afraid that the cool reception to David Byrne’s similarly staged Here Lies Love (which closed after just four months) may have sated Broadway’s appetite for immersive musicals, at least for a while. And this Guys and Dolls lacks one element usually needed to justify reviving an oft-revived show: no big-name stars.
I hold out more hope for the other London musical that wowed me: Operation Mincemeat. A fringe hit that has transferred to the West End, the show is a spoofy recounting of a British espionage plot during World War II, in which fake war plans were planted on a corpse disguised as a downed British pilot and deposited on the coast of Spain, in an effort to mislead the Germans about the coming invasion of Sicily. Conceived and performed by the SplitLip theater troupe, the show is a fast-paced, Pythonesque mélange of song, satire, and shtick, with five performers — three of them female, mostly in male drag — impersonating multiple characters to reenact the assorted twists and turns of the outlandish (but ultimately successful) plot.
It’s delirious, quick-change fun, with patter songs that hark back to Noel Coward and British music hall, and lyrics so rapid-fire that it’s hard to absorb them all on first hearing. (Check out the cast album on YouTube.) Much of the very British satire of MI5 bureaucracy and class protocol might not register with American audiences. But the real problem is that the deft ensemble work is so integral to the show’s success that it’s hard to imagine an American cast pulling if off as well. This is one British show that needs to travel with its original cast. The question is, will the Brits ever let them go?
Richard Zoglin 