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BURLESQUE is back... but not as you know it | who will direct the musical's London run and UK tour?
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And yet, here we are. So let's talk about what's happening, how we got here, and why this upcoming production of burlesque, or should I say these upcoming productions of burlesque, will in fact be unlike any that you or anybody else for that matter, has ever seen before. Get ready for Burlesque 3.0. But first. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to those of you listening to this on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre theatre. I am a critic, pundit and content creator here on social media and last summer I covered Burlesque the Musical on multiple fronts. I reviewed its opening night performance and I also talked about the reported backstage drama that was taking place in the run up to the show's West End opening night. The stage newspaper at the time reported that an Equity investigation had been launched into the show, and we didn't hear an awful lot more about that publicly, but I will tell you that at opening nights and press events it was certainly the talk of July. All this amidst the already interesting route. Shall we say that Burlesque had taken to the West End because this was not the world premiere of the stage adaptation of the film, in fact, this was the second iteration of the show in a short space of time, because the stage adaptation of the 2010 film was first seen regionally at the Manchester Opera House and in Glasgow in 2024. The production at the time was directed and choreographed by Nick Winston, who departed the show along with almost the entirety of his creative team, a large sway of the principal and ensemble cast and at least one producer between the regional premiere and the West End transfer. At which point the word transfer does start to feel like a little bit of a misnomer, because by the time the show was opening for a limited run at the Savoy Theatre in the West End ahead of the arrival of one Paddington Bear, not only was the design of the production completely different, you know, it didn't resemble the production photography from the regional run, with set designer Sutra Gilmour having been replaced by the new and brilliant set designer, Nate Bertone. But also material of the show itself was substantially different. It had been heavily reworked under the direction of new creative visionary, director, choreographer, co star and co writer Todrick hall, who continued to star in the show as one of the few cast members, along with another of the show's co writers, Jess Foley, starring in the Christina Aguilera role. The name of this character, I could not tell you right now. Gun to my head, she's not Nikki. Nikki's the other. Is she a Susie? Is she just called Star? I mean, you know, I'm thinking about Showgirls as well and that's not helping me at all. She wants to sing. She's looking for her mother. Her name is Tess. I remember Cher's name. Honestly, I'm not sure it matters. In any case, there was the regional production directed by Nick Winston, then there was the West End production directed by Todrick, which, in spite of all of the drama surrounding it, was actually quite successful on a number of fronts. It didn't gain an entirely positive critical consensus, but it did earn a five star review from Arifa Akbar in the Guardian, as well as a lot of box office demand. It sold very well at the Savoy, although it was only a limited run, and so you would easily anticipate, and perhaps prospective ticket buyers right now are, that if the show were to return again to London or elsewhere in the UK, it would be this 2.0 production, right? Wrong. As it turns out, this new version of Burlesque, which may or may not have preempted a previously Announced and subsequently cancelled Japanese production will not in fact be directed and choreographed by Todrick hall, who by all accounts is busy working on his own new musical, Midnight, but will be the third substantially different mounting of the show in the same number of years. And the question I would like to put to you is, is a red FL still a red flag when it's covered in sequins? With plenty for us to discuss about this newly announced production, its predecessors and the implications thereof, let's talk about Burlesque. So we are going to reflect a little more on the previous productions we made along the way, as it were. But I want to start with the news that was announced earlier today by a new PR representative for the show, which I think we can all agree doesn't come as a surprise, who gave us a wonderful tongue in cheek headline to this news. One of the most, most talked about shows of the decade, and he's not wrong, is announcing a West End return and a major UK tour. That's a gag. I had heard rumors beginning to surface that Burlesque was eyeing a return to the uk and in truth, this had been talked about since the run at the Savoy was beginning to come to an end. It was selling very well. They were something of a hot ticket. They wanted to be able to run for longer so that they could have any chance of recouping the show's massive investment. Because, you know, it cost a lot of money and they were doing very well, but they weren't doing very well for long enough and they just needed more time. And you know, Paddington Bear over here wasn't able to give them more time. Not because the Bear doesn't have manners, but he had the table at the restaurant booked first, as it were, and they were just filling a gap that was available. The head waiters at the Savoy Theatre, as it were, would have told the producers of Burlesque that the table was only available until 6:45 and they weren't going to have the chance to get dessert. But dessert is exactly what the show's producers and investors badly crave, hence the UK return. That being said, and the original reason I went on this tangent, I was not anticipating that it would be West End and a UK tour concurrently. That has blown my mind and I'll tell you more about why. But first, let's actually talk through these details. So one of the most talked about shows of the decade is announcing a West End return and a major 33 week UK tour. Burlesque is big, Burlesque is beautiful. Burlesque is back. Spoken like a threat. Christina Aguilera, Adam Paulden and Jason Haig, Ellery, Stephen Antin, Clint Culpepper in Fine Company are thrilled to announce that Spectacular Burlesque the Musical will open in the West End at the new theatre. Here we go, the Arts at Marble Arch. If you're thinking, what the hell is that? It doesn't. It exists yet. And I will explain a little bit more about what it is. We knew that this was happening. We did not know that burlesque was going to be the show to unveil it to the world, if that indeed is going to be their first tenant. We're calling this a West End return. This is a new theatre which is, I suppose, in London. And if we're willing to delude ourselves into calling the Troubadour Theatre in Wembley park, currently housing Starlight Express a West End venue, then I guess anything can be a West End venue if it just clicks its heels together and wants to be badly enough. So Marble Architecture apparently will also count. Is this going to be eligible as a revival? And if it is, am I going to have to be committed? This is the show's London return and it will be in previews from Saturday 12th September. Happy late birthday to me. Booking currently through Sunday, January 31st. Another little limited run, possibly with the option to extend. And so this is going to be a new theatrical space sharing its name with the Arts Theatre in the greater sort of Leicester Square, Covent Garden area, which has recently been home to the Choir of Man. We have known for some time that that theatre been set to close for a huge renovation of the building, which ultimately is going to be a very good thing because those toilets needed work. I have fond memories of seeing musicals there, but my goodness. So it was announced that there would be a new venue, the Arts, at Marble Arch, I think, in place of some sort of cultural project. Is this not where the mound was going to be at Marble Arch, which had all sorts of public backlash based on the amount that they were spending to, you know, create a glorified hill on a roundabout. In any case, I think it was either suggested or perhaps just inferred that the Choir of Man would be the show to play at that venue, that it would continue to find its home at the Arts Theatre, but that it would be the new Arts Theatre and it would be a fairly easy show to open with and try and draw a crowd with. It can be a very challenging thing for a new venue to establish itself, but possibly for that exact reason, the powers that be, whoever that is may have decided that they needed a splashier, glitzier opening. After all, this is going to be a higher capacity venue than the current Arts Theatre. And when you think splashy, when you think glitzy, when you think eye cat catching and talked about, you think of burlesque. And so that is where it is going to be. And there seems to be allegedly a proud history at this point of burlesque eyeing possible different locations to play in London. When it was first looking to come down, the rumor was that maybe it was going to take place at the Peacock Theatre. There was talk of the London Colosseum, which ended up housing the Great Gatsby instead. Finally they found a little pocket of space over at the Savoy and now an entirely new venue. Oh, and in the interim, allegedly they were looking at at the Old Witch. But that all could have just been rumour and speculation, of which there is plenty in London. This however, is confirmed and there's an interesting little detail here. It says the musical will be staged in the West End's newest theatre the Arts at Marble Arch, where over the next two years more than 500,000 people are expected to attend performances. Which is, you know, based on the capacity and projections. And we can all expect a lot of things, but you know, we're going to have to wait and see. It is fair enough to assume that the show could be a decent box office success. It has been in most of its runs so far. Burlesque is a popular title. We seem anecdotally to be seeing a little more success for comparatively more recent screen to stage musical adaptations, as well as those that cater to perhaps a slightly older demographic. The likes of Burlesque and the Devil Wears Prada having been more successful perhaps than clueless and mean girls in the West End. Who knew that appealing to the people with money was the way to go? You know, not that commercial theatre ought not to be considering broad audience demographics, but if your entire target market is still using 16 to 30 year old rail cards, then they may struggle to afford the top prices of the show's run at the Savoy Theatre. It is stated here that it was a triumphant, 100% sold out, critically acclaimed, strictly limited season. I don't know if we can call it entirely. What's the, what's the justification for critically acclaimed? If one critic acclaims you, have you technically been critically acclaimed? I do not know that I acclaimed. So it was not acclaimed by this critic. But I don't, I don't know that they care, which is Fair enough. And of the show's projected success, there is one other detail that we need to consider, because there is a factor that Burlesque has yet to contend with, which is a second production running.
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Try angel stuff for your tushy. It's made by Angels Soft and strong budget friendly. The choice is simple. A roll that feels like paradise and always at a heavenly prize. Pick up a pack today. Angel Soft. Currently. So we've spoken about London. Here are the details for the tour. Oh my God, it's opening and Woking. Okay. At the meantime, a second production, I hadn't realized that until now, will set out on a major 33 week UK tour, opening at the new Victoria Theatre in Woking. I used to work there. I visit often. It's fairly local to me, hence the excitement for two weeks from Saturday, July 25, running through 2026 and 2027. But that production is actually going to start first in July and late July and then in September the London one will begin, which is so curious that the tour is beginning first. They're gonna, I guess, work on it for that version and then also put up a version alongside that in London. That's a fascinating and fairly unique way to go about things, but also, I think, a fairly audacious expectation in terms of box office. Because a show can be popular in London, it can be popular regionally. It takes a hell of a lot of popularity to be able to do both of those things at the same time. And if we think about a decade and a half when I was going to regional touring theatre as a teenager, you generally only ever saw tours of shows that were still open in London if they were huge successes. And you didn't even see that all that often. Like the likes of Les MIS hadn't toured in a while and if they did, it was a huge deal. If Lion King was touring, it was a huge deal. And gradually we've reached the point over the years where we have a lot of shows currently or about to tour alongside ongoing London runs. Matilda Touring while still in London, the Book of Mormon, the Lion King has done this. Hamilton has done this very successfully, I might add. Wicked has done this. Les Mis has done this. Operation Mincemeat is another very curious one that is set to do this in the coming months. And it is always, I think, something of an eye opening experiment wherein you get to find out just exactly how popular a show is. Because to be able to take it out to the region so people don't need to travel, you then with the London production will only have audiences who are tourists visiting London or who already live in London in the first place. Because no one is going to come down from Manchester to go see Burlesque at Marble Arch in the West End if it's also coming to Manchester in a couple of months. Unless they really like burlesque, in which case they can go to buy tickets to anything. So you'll forgive me for being a little bit concerned about this plan. And it's one thing to open the West End production, have it run for six months and then put out a tour, but to actually start the tour initially, it feels like we're counting an awful lot of bedazzled chickens before they've hatched. Are there any more interesting details I need to read here or is it all just welcome to Burlesque, the glamorous, gritty and outrageously fun new musical. This is a very new musical. It's new every year, in fact, based on the much loved hit movie that reminds us, life isn't fair, it's fabulous. It truly has been a long time since I've seen this film because every time they used this quote in marketing, I had no recollection of it whatsoever. Discover a club like no other A place beneath the city lights Underneath the city lights. That's why I won't be appearing in either of those productions. Where the sequins sparkle, seduction shimmers and a life can change in the flick of a feather boa When Ally heads to New York Alley. There we go. We've all found closure now. Thank you so much. You can stop commenting down below. When Ally heads to New York in search of her mother, a twist for the stage adaptation from the film, she finds herself drawn into a dazzling underground world where the beat of the music and the heat of the dance moves will change her life forever. Ally will unwittingly find her extraordinary voice and a most unlikely family of misfits, dreamers and schemers. Cast and creative team to be announced soon which does rather bring us to my next point, which is to indicate that in that fairly innocuous little sentence at the end of that press release, what they're actually saying is, by the way, Todrick isn't doing this anymore and we're about to hire our third director in three years to mount the third different version of the show that anyone has seen. So all those production images that we're using, all those five star reviews that are going to appear on our posters, are actually indicative of a show that this no longer is. Which begs the question, what exactly, exactly is this burlesque going to be?
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And why. So yes, this is going to be a new version of the musical, directed and choreographed by a new third creative, unless Nick Winston returns to the show in a beautiful, unexpected symmetry familiar of Smash, the TV series. I'm talking about the episode when Derek decided to let them use his choreography again and everyone was friends. Somehow I don't think that's actually going to happen here, and there could be a series of entirely reasonable and understandable explanations for how the show has arrived at this point. Alternatively, the proverbial sound of hoofbeats that we're hearing here could be indicative of horses rather than zebras. What I mean by that is, while phrasing this as carefully as I can, this show, which has sort of been hemorrhaging creatives from its earliest iterations, seems to enduringly be part of to some ongoing creative differences. This in spite of the fact that the last time we were having almost this exact conversation, everybody in the comments section wanted to lay the blame squarely at the feet of one Todrick hall, who, you know, admittedly was wearing a bunch of different hats and had a lot of different responsibilities in the creative process when the show was opening in London. However, I urged you all at the time not to do that because it was very contrary to things that I had been hearing, which for legal reasons I was not about to repeat. I know I have some very snazzy cushions in the back background, but it may shock you all to learn I do not have frivolous lawsuit money and I'm not about to speak on here as though I do. The timeline of events that we do know factually, however, is this. Nick Winston was directing and choreographing with a creative team alongside he and most of them departed the production before London. Todrick hall stepped in. The way that he spoke about this in interviews was that it was out of necessity that they needed somebody to direct and that he had some experience in that area. He had said, I believe in a Broadway World interview that there was some enthusiasm to have Christopher Catelli come and direct, but that scheduling did not align with that because the show unexpectedly had an earlier opportunity to open in London, which would align with much of what I was hearing about burlesque's attempts to find a West End home. However, in show business, when you hear the word scheduling conflict, this could mean almost anything from legitimate scheduling conflicts to significant personality differences. And it's a shame, because Christopher Gattelli, who not long ago directed and choreographed Death Becomes her on Broadway, would be a fantastic pair of hand for burlesque. Possibly he could be the yet to be announced director and choreographer of this new version of the show, but I find that unlikely because there is to my mind something of a foregone conclusion about who this third director is going to be. And before we get to that, it would seem, in spite of the historic drama of the show, that Todrick Hall's ceasing involvement with the production could have everything to do with the fact that he is developing his own very time consuming new musical. That he is pouring his heart and soul all into this, he has said, is his baby. There was a workshop production, it's having another development run opening very, very soon. He is also appearing in the show. He's written the show, it's incredibly demanding and he's not going to have time realistically to go and direct two different concurrent productions of burlesque. His show is called Midnight and I have to tell you, I've been hearing the most sensational things about it for quite a while now. He also shared a comment on social media earlier today with enthusiasm about the show's return. So it would seem as though there is not overt bad blood there. It also wouldn't surprise if we no longer see him performing in the show, although you never know. It depends on the timeline of his own new musical and whatever else he is doing. Would it be unusual for him to return to the show as a performer in a new version of it that he's no longer directing and choreographing? You know, how easy is it for anyone really to walk back into that rehearsal room that they are no longer leading and then be directed and choreographed in a a reprised performance that you've already given as directed by yourself? That feels strange. Of course, he won't be the only star not returning to the show. And there was massive cast change between the first and second version with Jackie Burns originating the role of Tess. Orfeh played the role in London. I anticipate we're going to get a third and fourth Tess for the West End and touring productions. I also believe that Jess Foley won't be available to star as Ali in either of them. She gave something of a star making performance and as a result earned herself a new job playing Eponine in Les Miserables, which is very exciting. I can't wait to see her in that role. I think she's going to be fantastic. I believe that her songs, those that were retained from the world premiere run as well as Todrick's material, is going to stay in the show even if they aren't attached as creatives or performers. In other words, we probably won't get as full a rewrite this time around unless Stephen Antin finally gets his way and cuts Diane Warren's song you Haven't Seen the Last of Me, which apparently he wanted to cut from the original film film. The first time I learned that little piece of trivia, I didn't just gasp, I gay gasped. And I won't cite this explicitly, but there is, if you want to go and listen to it, a little bit of a conversation between original film stars Cher and Kristen Bell on her podcast, I think, which Cher was a guest on honoring them with her presence in which they discussed challenges on the set of the film pertaining to an alleged toxic relationship. And I share that piece of news with you for no specific reason before telling you that it is my assumption that that this third new iteration of burlesque will in fact be directed by the film's original director and screenwriter, also a producer of the stage version since its incarnation, and a co book writer, Stephen Antin. In fact, I am willing to put money on the fact that Stephen Antin will be directing this production and that Robin Antin, his sister, will be choreographing. And it does seem as though the two of them have both been very present creative forces throughout the show's development thus far. And it varies historically the extent to which a producer will be hands on in the creative process. Individuals like Sir Cameron Mackintosh have in the past been very involved with their shows, very involved in rehearsals and in shaping the vision and in shaping and in some cases even rewriting the material. And I would assume that if you were to combine that role with an individual who was also the director, the screenwriter, the creative visionary behind the film version, then it does feel quite likely that they're going to have at least one hand on the steering wheel the entire time time. So I do think it's pretty likely we're going to be singing Stephen, Take the Wheel come July. But since all we can really do for now is speculate, we are going to have to wait and find out. I did not think I would be talking about the musical this soon, but I can guarantee you right now this is not the last time you will hear me discussing it in 2026. Quite literally, you haven't seen the last of me, or indeed of burlesque. And I do, as always, wish for these productions to be successful. I want nothing more, more ever than for artists to be successful and for audiences to be pleased. And I hope that both of those things can happen with the return of Burlesque as they're ready to open one production at the top of a shopping center and the other just yards away from a Primark, the punchline to which writes itself so effortlessly that I'm not even going to deliver it for you. But if you would like to comment it down below, then that's entirely up to you. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening to my thoughts about burlesque. Get ready for, like I said, a completely new version of Burlesque 3.0 happening in two different places at once from summer onwards. Stay tuned for my review, or quite possibly reviews of what will almost definitely be a very different version of the show. And if you want to hear my thoughts about other shows between now and then, make sure you're subscribed right here on YouTube or following me on podcast platforms. And in the meantime, I have been Mickey Joe, and I hope, as always, that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo, the oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a Stagey Day.
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