Micky Jo (0:00)

Who put the Glad in Aren't yout Glad? We now know one of the next shows going to Theatre Royal Drury Lane in the West End. It's Hercules. The answer is Hercules. Oh my God. Hey. Welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. My name is Micky Jo and I'm obsessed with all things theatre. As well as being a professional theatre critic here on social media, I'm also a theatre pundit and a content creator. You can find me on other social media apps like Instagram, like the app formerly known as Twitter, like TikTok, where I bring you reviews, theatre going vlogs and also theatrical breaking news, which is exactly what we're going to be talking about today. If I seem a little bit manic, it's unbelievably warm in here, but I have a Zoom meeting in 37 minutes. This news just broke and in order to film this without literally sweating to death, my feet are currently in a bowl of ice water. So I'm experiencing a lot of temperature extremes right now that really didn't matter for the purpose of this video, but I like to share with you tiny people in my camera. It is also because I'm very excited. Finally we know one of the next tenants at Theatre Royal Drury Lane. And finally we know that Hercules coming to London. Now, this has been speculated about for a little while now, sort of ever since the show announced that it was going to be heading to Hamburg, Germany. Hercules has had an interesting theatrical journey so far, one that I am going to be recapping briefly for you in today's video. But with the opening of the German production coinciding with the news that Frozen was going to close after a few successful years in London's West End at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, and the revelation that Disney still had, and I know nothing about like property technicalities, but some sort of a lease agreement on the theatre, meaning that they, you know, they would the right to install another show there after Frozen. That's what made everyone think that Hercules was probably happening. And with my ear very much to the ground on this one, I was hearing all sorts of back and forth that Hercules had Drury Lane, that it lost Drury Lane, that it was going there. We've heard so many other rumored shows for this theater, we still don't know what's going in before Hercules because it's going to be opening in the summer of 2025. But let's talk about all of this at length in today's video. Now, if you enjoy this one, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Turn on that notifications button so you don't miss the next theatrical breaking news and go find me on other social media platforms as well. For all of my many theatre thoughts, I'm a man with opinions who is not afraid to share them. Opinions that include my reviews of the last two times I have seen Hercules on stage. I saw the production at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. The Paper Mill Playhouse. The Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey last year in March of 2023 and I saw Hamburg production almost a year later in March of 2024. I made full video reviews of both of those productions. You can go and check them out on my channel right now, but in the meantime, let's talk about Hercules coming to the West End and how it got here. So a little bit of backstory then. Hercules obviously is a Disney musical based on Greek myth. Disney have over the last 25 years brought many of their beloved films to the stage with the likes of Beauty and the Beast and the Lion King, which is like one of the most long running successful musicals now of all worldwide. They've also had reasonable success with Frozen and Aladdin, which just celebrated its 10th anniversary on Broadway and is currently touring the UK. But that isn't to say that every single Disney stage musical has been a huge success, because along the way there have been shows like the Little Mermaid, which wasn't really hugely popular on Broadway and subsequently never made it to the uk. Fingers crossed that it still might. Also the likes of Disney's Tarzan, again not successful in the US but enjoying ongoing success in Germany, where it's currently playing in Stuttgart. And we could investigate at length why those particular productions productions weren't as successful as Disney's big hitters. But what's interesting is trying to anticipate where exactly Hercules is going to fall on this spectrum because it hasn't had the strongest start. So Hercules was first seen, I say, on stage, it was outdoors. It was an open air production at the Delacorte Theatre in New York a few summers ago and it was part of their public works project where it involves an enormous ensemble of people and it's sort of half professional and half community cast. This, needless to say, is not Disney Theatrical's traditional route towards staging, you know, their most iconic properties. And it didn't seem as though they were really prioritizing Hercules getting to Broadway. The show was remounted, however, a few years later at Papermill Playhouse, the same regional New Jersey based theatre where newsies first premiered. Now at the time it was thought that Newsies was only being produced on stage so that it could subsequently be licensed because it was obviously going to make an enormous amount of money being licensed to youth and schools groups. And in order to license a version of the show, they had to create a version of the show to do that. But it was a surprise success that ended up transferring to the Needle Ender Theatre on Broadway. Hercules's run at Paper Mill was a little less successful, I'm sorry to say. And you can go and watch my video review for a little more insight as to why that might have been. But in any case, it did not spark an immediate transfer to Broadway. The next time we heard about the show, it was going to be produced in Hamburg, Germany in a co production with Stage Entertainment, who are a huge producing force in Hamburg and in Germany, in fact. And I made a point to see both of those productions. And though the Hamburg production bore in many ways a similarity to the Paper Mill one, there were also strong creative differences, largely brought about by a completely new director, Broadway director Casey Nicholaw, Tony Award winning director and choreographer Casey Nicolor. And there's a lot that they changed about the show in terms of tinkering with its storytelling, in terms of changing some characterizations. Some creatures became humans, some humans became mythical creatures. The choreography and the costuming were distinctly different. The set design remained largely the same from what I can remember. But I also only have so much insight into the material of this production because the whole thing was performed in German. And my gcst, A Star in German, did not equip me with enough understanding to follow entirely what was happening. People who saw the show, who did speak German, who were native German speakers, commented on my review video of that production. If you want to go and look in the comments there and see what they thought. There was a little bit of criticism as to some of the. What I remember being described as a sort of an insincerity of the material, that the jokes were kind of corny, which, for what it's worth, they also were in Paper Mill but in a way that I enjoyed. So, you know, hard for me to really say what the material was like. And because they had to go through a translation process, hard for the English speaking writers to say what the material was like. Honestly now I enjoyed the show in Hamburg. I was very glad to have made the trip. And there is so much about Hercules that really works on stage predominantly it's that music, it's that Alan Menken score which is just so fantastic and so heart poundingly Good. And it's characters like the Muses on stage. Like, it's basically Dreamgirls when you get into it within the context of a Disney film. And those vocals and those harmonies and the sass and the characterisation, it all ought to work so well. And yet there is still something about Hercules in Hamburg, which continues to run, that still wasn't delivering everything that I had hoped for, because there was an element of Disney magic that was still sadly absent from the production. Whether it's because Pegasus as a creature wasn't featured, this is something that we've seen in other Disney film to stage adaptations. Like in Aladdin, a lot of the animals from the animated film were cut just for, like, presumably logistical reasons. Also directed by Casey Nicholaw. It's worth noting, but what Aladdin still has is the magic carpet ride and sequences like Friend and Me, where they bring Disney magic to the stage. And, you know, for a Disney show, it's a very different thing. Audiences have a very specific set of expectations. You know, they are coming for the great songs that they know and love. That's a huge part, I think, of why the Lion King is still successful. But the other really winning thing about the Lion King is the visual spectacle that it delivers. And Hercules looked great in Hamburg. I just needed it to be bigger. That was sort of one of my main complaints about the thing, was that we still needed Disney magic on a grander scale, which is why I'm so intrigued about it coming to the West End at Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Specifically. Let me tell you about why, and let me tell you everything we know about next year's London arrival. Now, I say that we really don't know much. We know that it's going to open in the summer of 2025 at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, where Frozen is currently playing. Frozen is going to be closing later this year, which does imply that there's going to be at least one, perhaps two limited runs between now and then at Theatre Royal Drury Lane. And rumours are swirling about what exactly those might be. Some of those don't surprise me, but do disappoint me. Some of those really surprised me and I'm almost palpably nervous about them. We're all going to have to wait and see. I'm not going to spread random things that I've heard because half of them could turn out to be complete nonsense. Now, according to the Watson Stage article here, the creatives from the Hamburg production do seem to remain the same. So direction and choreography by Casey Nicolor and co Choreography by Tanisha Scott, that's really all that it tells us there. But if you're not familiar with Theatre Royalty Lane, this is a vast and very grand theatre in the West End. It's a historic building. It's also gorgeous, but it is on a really enormous scale. The stage is very big and the capacity is also very big. It has a capacity of 2,196 people, which makes it very hard to sell. It is not every show that can just transfer into Theatre Royal Drury Lane. It needs to have huge appeal, which is something that Disney properties have. And even though Hercules doesn't necessarily play as well to a family audience, and you won't see as many, like families traveling in from around the country bringing their young children, because, you know, Hercules wasn't as recent, what it ought to have is a little bit more of the nostalgia factor than something like Frozen. My neighbor Totoro is not a recent animated film. It has sold incredibly well twice at the Barbican. It's transferring to the Gillian Lynn Theatre. That's a show I thought ought to go to Drury Lane, honestly, but it's going to do very well at the Gillian Lynn. That has an enormous amount of nostalgia factor, because people bring their young children to experience Totoro for the first time, even if the kids don't know the film. And you also get people who fell in love with the film years before and now reconnect to it as adults. That hopefully is something we will see with Hercules. We will see that generation, sort of my generation, I guess, going back to see the show on stage. And those, I think, are the people we're seeing the most excitement among right now. But because it's Drury Lane, it sort of begets an even bigger production. It demands that they do something bigger with it and that they do something of enormous scale, because such are the capabilities of this theatre now. When Frozen opened in the West End, they introduced a new set piece to the show. This enormous bridge structure that Anna and Kristoff travel across while they are on their way to Elsa's Ice palace to go and defrost everything. And the bridge rolls across the stage and is wider than seemingly the entire building. This bridge set piece keeps going, going and going. I have visions of them like Lego building the whole thing in the wings as it's running. I don't know if it's, like, inflatable or something, or if it, like, turns corners. I have no idea how they do this bridge set piece, but it's huge. And that is something that they added to Frozen for the West End for this enormous space. The production of Hercules as it currently is in Hamburg is not doing enough to justify Theatre Royal Drury Lane or to wow audiences enough that they leave the theatre talking about it. And that's important when you need to sell this kind of a capacity as well, because we want Hercules to be a huge success here. We need really crowd pleasing family shows in those big theatres. I know not everyone loves Disney theatrical properties on stage, but guess what? There are great many theaters in the West End, just like there are a great many theaters on Broadway. We need diversity in those shows in the kind of offerings that there are in order to, you know, balance out the whole theatrical market, to make the theatre industry work. And if this is going to be a vast Disney production, then hopefully it means an enormous amount of jobs. Which I think brings me neatly to my next point, because my hopes for this production aside, I am very intrigued about who they're going to cast in it. So let's dreamcast what the cast of Hercules might look like in the West End and maybe we'll check back in when they announce the cast, which is going to be months down the line yet. Don't get too excited, but maybe we'll have predicted some correctly. Now, the casting of Hercules himself has been very specific across all of the productions the show has ever had. It was Jelani Aladdin first in the Central park production, then Bradley Gibson at Papermill and Bennett Monteiro in Hamburg. And through this we have seen a consistent casting approach by Disney to have black actors in the role. And credit to Disney, this is something that they have been doing in various productions for a few years now. And it's, you know, it varies from one production to the next in terms of how they want their characters to be represented. But we not too long ago had a UK tour of Beauty and the Beast where both Belle and the Beast were both played by black performers. Not for the first time this had happened before on Broadway, but to have both sides of a romantic Disney pairing on stage played by non white actors, still pretty groundbreaking. Ought not to be groundbreaking really in the 2000 and twenties, but still was. So again, credit where it's due. And I'm excited about that because I recently talked about how many different shows we are seeing both on Broadway and in the West End where women of color are paired romantically opposite white leading men. And it sort of feels a little bit like a fetishization, which is not really a word I expected to be using in a video about a Disney musical. So I apologize for getting a little deep, but I was like, where are the opportunities for young, romantic male leads of color? And Hercules is a really exciting role because they get to play a lot of those things. They get to play romance, they get to play Triumph, and it's a coming of age story. But he's also, you know, he's naive and he's selfish and he's willful at the beginning and he has this whole boyish charm at the start of the thing. And he goes on a journey, a heroic journey. Now, if you're asking me who I think would be perfect for this show, I would love to see Jordan Benjamin playing the role he has just started in Hamilton. He was most recently seen in the Little Big Things. I don't know if he would be out of Hamilton in time. We don't really know exactly the dates when Hercules is going to be starting at Drury Lane. Often, you know, we hear summer and then that turns into something else, like maybe September. Although you would have thought this being aimed at a family audience that they would want to launch ahead of the school summer holidays in late July. So, you know, I anticipate it being, let's say, July or June 2025. But I think Jordan would be excellent. We saw in Little Big Things him playing this youthfulness, he fantastic voice and, you know, he's doing great work in the West End. But it would be great to see him getting this kind of a huge breakout opportunity. And I just think he aligns very well with everything that we have seen in their casting approach to Hercules so far. I could really see him playing this material and doing a great job. But you could also see somebody like Jordan Shaw being a terrific Hercules. I don't know who the Muses would be, but I'm very excited to think about what those vocals might sound like. Interestingly enough, there is a British performer named Shekinah Macfarlane who is currently playing one of the Muses in the Hamburg production. She was in Lizzie and in Six here in the uk, I think we would almost definitely see some Six alumni, maybe some Dreamgirls, recent UK tour in London productions alumni as the Muses as well. And if I was a betting man and you asked me who I thought Megara might be, someone like Christina Lado I think would be a very traditional Disney choice, but maybe also like a Mayo Kwanzaa breed. I think Emma Kingston would be a lot of fun and would sing the hell out of the thing. And another one I'm very excited think about is who will be playing Hades because there's been interesting casting and very wildly different casting for Hades over the show's history. Roger Bart did it at Central park, which is a fun nod to the original film, because Roger Bart, if you didn't know, was the singing voice of Hercules in the animated film. So to then go to playing Hades. Also, I apologize if this is how you found out that Roger Bart is the singing voice of Hercules, because I used to only know him as the creepy pharmacist from Desperate Housewives, and the day I found that out, I. I had to do a lot of, like, quiet sitting down and reflection. Now, when the show went to New Jersey, it was played by Schuler Hensley, who a very different type to Roger Bart. And so I don't know who among the West End, maybe some, like, Javert alumni, potentially someone like a Jeremy Secombe, maybe. I could see him being like the Schuler Hensley style of Hades, but he doesn't really give Roger Bart. The closest thing we have to Roger Bart is probably Corey English, who replaced Roger Bart in Back to the the Musical. But I'm very open to hearing some alternative suggestions. Comment down below. Who would you like to see playing Hades playing all of these roles in Hercules when it reaches the West End? I am tentatively excited about this one. I think they have enough time to do the work that this production still needs a little bit more tinkering with the material and a hefty dose of Disney magic, both in terms of, you know, the feel and the storytelling and the narrative and hitting all of those emotional beats. Big progress has been made on that front, but it could still be even better if we're to make this a stage classic. And let's do it right, let's do it properly so that the thing lasts. The other thing that we need is grand visual spectacle big enough to justify the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. I am very excited to see what they do. I have faith in Disney Theatrical and this team, you know, they're gonna deliver, they're gonna spend the money. That's one thing. And I think that even though I would encourage people who are thrilled beyond all reason to manage their expectations for this, based on what it's looked like on stage thus far, it could grow to something more heroic than it's been, shall we say? In the meantime, I feel like that's all I have to say about Hercules coming to the West End. Let me know all of your thoughts and feelings in the comments section down below. Are you nervous about this? Are you excited. Who do you want to see in it in the West End? And do we think it's going to go on to head to Broadway thereafter? You know, it's been a while since we've had a big Disney musical come to London first before New York. Also, West End pundits, what do you think might be going into Theatre Royal Drury Lane between now and Hercules? Let me know in the comments. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed today's video. If you did, make sure to subscribe, go and follow me on all of those other social media platforms. And stay tuned for more news about Hercules in the West End. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Micky Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a Stagey day. Subscrib.