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MickeyJoTheatre
Mickey-Jo saw 28 new musicals in 2 days?! | What happened at BEAM 2025 - UK new musical theatre conference
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- [00:00]
Advertiser 1
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Mickey Jo
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- [01:42]
Mickey Jo
How did I see 28 new musicals in just two days? Let me explain. Oh my God.
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Co-host 1
Hey.
- [01:48]
Mickey Jo
Welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I am a professional theatre critic and a content creator based here in the UK and a couple of months ago I had the joy of attending beam, organized by the Musical Theatre Network and Mercury Musical Developments in conjunction with the Birmingham Hippodrome, the new home of new musical theatre here in the uk. Beam is a biannual musical theatre conference, new musical theatre pitching day, opportunity and networking event and for two days a bunch of prospective new musicals who have gone through a extensive process in order to get to have this opportunity pitch their show for anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes to a room full of potentially interested parties. These are shows, some of them very early on in development. What I am here to do today, as well as giving you a little bit of an insight into the event and what it's like, is let you know about the 28 new musicals which were pitched this year. So if you are curious to learn about the hit new musicals of tomorrow, buckle up while I take you a couple of months back in time to bee.
- [03:14]
Co-host 1
Oh, my God. Hey.
- [03:15]
Mickey Jo
Hello.
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Co-host 2
It's cold.
- [03:16]
Mickey Jo
It is.
- [03:17]
Co-host 1
We are here at the Birmingham Hippodrome, the new home of new musical theatre in the UK for Beam. Beam, which is a biannual, as in every other year, musical theatre conference, and principally a pitching day for brand new musicals. Some of them concept, some of them partially written, some of them fully written.
- [03:38]
Co-host 2
All the big producers in the UK will be there, including international producers as well.
- [03:43]
Co-host 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah. People have traveled from afar, representatives of venues, different theatre companies.
- [03:49]
Co-host 2
It's kind of like when you hear about, like the film markets, the big famous ones, where the creators of films are pitching to the producers, to distributors to get a deal.
- [03:59]
Co-host 1
And there's about just under three dozen.
- [04:01]
Mickey Jo
Of them over the next couple of.
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Co-host 2
Days was quite a lot.
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Mickey Jo
Yeah.
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Co-host 1
They spend 10, 15 minutes pitching their shows.
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Mickey Jo
We'll hear a little bit of the music.
- [04:09]
Co-host 1
The participants over the next couple of days have been whittled down from hundreds, perhaps even thousands of applications that were narrowed down via panel selection days. I had the privilege of sitting on one of those panels and helping in the selection process, which was a really fun day. Some of these shows I'm familiar with because I've seen some workshops, others I know nothing about, but I am very intrigued by. And if you're wondering about previous shows that have come from Beam, they include Operation Mincemeat.
- [04:39]
Co-host 2
Two Strangers Carry a Cake across New York.
- [04:41]
Co-host 1
Yeah. Which of course have both gone on to find West End and North American success. Because Two Strangers has just or is about to open at Art in Massachusetts. And Operation Mincemeat has just been nominated for four Tony Awards, including Best New Musical on Broadway.
- [04:57]
Co-host 2
And they've just announced a world tour.
- [04:58]
Co-host 1
And they've just announced a world tour. Great point. So huge success can come for these shows. And it all starts here at Beme. Some other stuff going on here at Beme over the next couple days. There will be lots of professional networking. They're also profiling a bunch of different exciting creatives and writers. A lot of the events are happening simultaneously, so I won't necessarily be able to see any of Those. Because I'm prioritizing seeing all of the pitches.
- [05:21]
Co-host 2
Yes, we are. We are in for the big rooms where we're going to be watching every single musical pitch to the Producers.
- [05:28]
Co-host 1
This is Birmingham Hippodrome, everybody. Multiple different theatrical spaces inside one very large auditorium, as well as a smaller studio space that I think we'll be spending much of the next two days in.
- [05:40]
Mickey Jo
We're quite early because I thought we needed to be here at 9. Don't need to be here till half past.
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Co-host 2
We don't technically have to be here till half ten.
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Co-host 1
We don't have to be here till half past ten.
- [05:48]
Co-host 2
Half nine is like early birds. We're earlier than the early birds.
- [05:52]
Mickey Jo
We are what's before early birds. Night owls.
- [05:55]
Co-host 1
The sensible worms.
- [05:56]
Mickey Jo
We're here, we're inside.
- [05:58]
Co-host 1
I have my accreditation. Lanyard. There you go. There you go.
- [06:03]
Mickey Jo
Yes, that is my name.
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Co-host 1
My surname is not actually theatre.
- [06:06]
Mickey Jo
Should I have it legally changed?
- [06:07]
Co-host 1
Answers in the comments down below. We also have, let me just show you here, programs for the Beam Showcase. I might even be able to show you inside.
- [06:16]
Mickey Jo
Yep. We have a welcome here from the.
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Co-host 1
Terrific folks at Mercury Musical Developments and Musical Theatre Network. There's James and and Natalia. They work tirelessly to make events like Beam as well as others happen. And here we have some information about some of the shows that are being pitched today. Starting this is all Thursday morning. My goodness, Maison Mac. That's one that I've seen in Workshop. There you go. But otherwise, I don't think I know.
- [06:43]
Mickey Jo
Much about any of these.
- [06:44]
Co-host 1
The Swan Song, All My Heart, Time Bomb, the Orchard, Duppy Quadrille and exotic. A queer wrestling fantasia. I mean, that one jumps out at you, doesn't it? Excited to let you know all about these. Currently it is all about professional networking going on here. All the lanyard wearers, chit chatting over coffee and breakfast foods. I've just been chatting with Canada.
- [07:07]
Mickey Jo
So we've arrived at the first pitching session and the very first show which was presented was Maison Mac. Now, this is a show I actually knew a little something about because I had seen the Workshop already and it's a contemporary, intense musical adaptation of Macbeth. When I went to see the workshop workshop, I think I was expecting it to be a sort of a comic take on it. I don't know if the name Maison Mac gave me that sort of an idea, but once they explained it as Shakespeare Meets the Bear, I thought not only, oh, that makes a lot of sense, but also that's really marketable. I love the fact that it is gender flipped. I like that we are following a career focused female protagonist. I like the playing that they have done with names and I think as a concept it's something that they can continue to have even more fun with as it develops. I liked the music as well. It was reminding me, actually, a little bit of shows like Two Strangers, a little bit Great Gatsby. Very contemporary musical theater. Next up was Duppy Quadrille. First thing I wrote down was scariest musical since Sweeney Todd. Question mark. That's either something I thought or something that they said. This culturally relates to the Windrush generation. And it was atmospheric, also intense. It was definitely in the horror realm. Think musical ghost story. The music was Jamaican. It felt very book driven. It had a natural relationship to storytelling because of the spooky ghost story of it all. The character dynamics were compelling. It did in fact scare me. I loved what they did with lighting and atmosphere, their presentation. I thought that this could easily go somewhere like the Bush Theatre, the Lyric Hammersmith, Stratford east maybe.
- [08:30]
Co-host 1
And I liked that we were hearing.
- [08:31]
Mickey Jo
A slightly different musical sound, that we were uplifting classical voices. The score felt a little familiar, something more like Grey Gardens. Now the next show was the first pitch to really grab my attention. This was exotic, a queer wrestling fantasia. Definitely funny in a very silly way. It is set in Rhyl in Wales in the 90s. And there's a story about a young man who reluctantly has to take up wrestling. And there's this big expectation around it. The whole thing is so charmingly ridiculous, but it's a story that we can really recognize. We understand the beats of where this is going to go. We see the humanity in it, but also the nonsense comedy in it. Now they actually had an entire wrestling ring on stage. A large cast, appropriately costumed in these eye catching wrestling outfits. And it struck me that wrestling, while it has been, you know, turned into various TV programs and you know, it's an inherently very theatrical thing, hasn't really been tapped with for its theatrical potential. We haven't had like a big wrestling musical. There's wrestling adjacent Edinburgh fringe shows that I'm aware of, but not in a big commercial way. This was also very queer. It was self referential, it's self aware. I wonder if it needed a stronger musical identity. I wasn't necessarily getting a sense of this is what the score is. That's definitely one of Mickey Jo's ones to watch.
- [09:48]
Co-host 1
I have grabbed a croissant, a croissant.
- [09:51]
Mickey Jo
Because my stomach was rumbling, which is not good.
- [09:54]
Co-host 1
I'm very excited to tell you about all of these shows when I get a break, which is not yet because we have to go and see like four more next.
- [10:00]
Mickey Jo
We had the Orchard. I wrote down Culture, Home and Cider. That was a big part of the identity of this show. It felt very fringe ready and for some of these shows that that seems to be the natural destination of a lot of them. Musically it reminded me of great music that you might hear in a pub garden. It transported me there, which is what it's trying to do. It's a two hander show, 60 minutes with the characters multi rolling telling a story about community. It's a very hallmark plot actually and I feel like they could lean into that by giving it an even more hallmarky title. I do feel dramaturgically you might need a third person because there was an idea within the narrative about her character being an outsider. But she's also playing members of the community and I feel like if we had a clearer separation there. I think they're also playing instruments at the same time. So there's a lot going on. I just wonder if you need a third to make the whole thing a little more dramatically interesting. Now next we had Time Bomb. Very interesting show conceptually because it has been co written by multiple different composers, an intergenerational group of composers in order to talk about the climate crisis. The music was very detailed, very lyric driven. The whole thing was conceptually very striking. It definitely struck me as something that would fit very well in a theatre like the new Diorama. There is within the show the mechanic for the audience to vote. The whole thing is conceived as a trial amidst the climate crisis. And it's, you know, it's a very tricky to talk about in theatre and in musical theatre with an aim to trying to bring awareness to this and to trying and to try and rally more people to this cause. Are we trying to preach to the choir here or are we trying to open new minds? What are we trying to do now? This next one was another really interesting concept. This musical is called All My Heart. It has been crafted from real stories from participants of the Transplant Games which is a Paralympics for organ donation recipients. And as you can imagine immediately there is a great, really moving, powerful story here. The writing is also verbatim and it was conveyed very clearly in the presentation that there are really powerful and moving things to be said here. I don't know if the score is delivering that just yet. I don't know if the opening is quite right. It approaches it more From a point of satirical novelty, there is really a remarkable story to be told that would resonate hugely, I think with a British audience. These are the kind of stories that we love to see in musical theatre. And I think with lyrics that can tell us a little more and music that feels a little more honest, it would absolutely be very special. Next up, something a little bit more abstract. This was the Swan song we were asked to consider. A smoky, dimly lit jazz bar with a multi rolling band telling this abstract story that had a fairly elaborate plot. Felt sort of Faustian. This mysterious character called the Swan convinces a young woman that there is still value to her life. It's a transformative flight to the edge and back, inspired by classic movies, epic mythology and life changing nights out. And I think there is a really interesting story here. Really liked the music. It was jazzy but contemporary. Some of the most interesting music that I had heard by this point. Lyrically it was ethereal. I like the double meaning in the title. I was very curious about what the visual storytelling would be to accompany the gig theatre concept of this. This very far reaching plot. And I'd be very curious. I think this would need to be paired with a really innovative director in a really interesting production.
- [13:19]
Co-host 1
We have broken for lunch.
- [13:20]
Co-host 2
We have.
- [13:21]
Co-host 1
And we are enjoying lunch. Bits and pieces.
- [13:24]
Co-host 2
I just wonder where my glasses were. They're on my head.
- [13:26]
Mickey Jo
That's listen.
- [13:27]
Co-host 1
That's the kind of morning that we have had. We have watched. Listened to seven different new musical pitches.
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Mickey Jo
Yes.
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Co-host 1
Of varying lengths. And variety has been the word of the morning. They've all been so completely different musically in terms of the stories they're telling. In terms of like the end goals.
- [13:46]
Mickey Jo
That they're seeking and the nature of.
- [13:47]
Co-host 1
Each production as well. I'm gonna eat a sandwich now.
- [13:50]
Mickey Jo
Then we headed into the afternoon which began with Fairlight, an electro pop musical performed on a tennis court. Yes, you heard me correctly. Telling the origin story of lawn tennis through a queer lens. Through an imagined queer lens, as the two men who invented lawn tennis are reconceived, recontextualized with the possibility that they may have had a then illegal homosexual relationship. On the basis that, you know, some men of the time did. Though with, I believe no historical evidence to actually support the fact that. That they did necessarily. Which I have slightly mixed feelings about. What I love is the site specific idea and actually staging a musical on a tennis court. I think once you're going to make the decision to do that, the structure of the whole thing and the structure of the piece dramatically has to then become like a tennis match basically. And once again I'd be very intrigued to see how this is actually staged and directed. I'm fairly certain at one point they said that there would be tennis players separate to the performers and I feel like it has to be all inclusive. I don't think you can separate those elements. I think you need multi hyphenate actor tennis players, which is going to be interesting. Then we have the Snare and Feral. Now this is one of the shows that was being pitched at Beam this year that was selected at the initial pre beam pitching day that I was a part of. There were several of these around the country. This is another actor, musician show with a folky score. We meet multiple souls living in this sort of a purgatory. They are trapped as the house band in a tavern between death and wherever we go next. And they are reimagined, reincarnated as animals because they behaved poorly in the life before. And they are trying to recall, I believe, the details of.
- [15:31]
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- [15:43]
Advertiser 1
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- [16:07]
Mickey Jo
This life and they are finding out and we're finding out at the same time what happened. Musically it was very strong. I could see this earning itself a lot of fans. Again, I'm curious about the visual language and how it's conveyed that they are all animals and you know, whether it's really necessary for them to all be animals. I wrote that the lyrics were bang tidy. That's not a not a phrase I often use. Clearly I was excited. Next up was Paradise Road, a bold contemporary reimagining of Bruce Beresford's 1997 film brought to life with a folk pop rock score. Set in a Japanese internment camp During World War II, it tells the story of a diverse group of women who form a secret vocal orchestra. Hello. Risking their lives to turn music and friendship into acts of revolution and survival. I wrote down There as a story here and it's one of humanity. It was traditional musical theatre. It was very musically stirring, very intense, quite heavy.
- [16:56]
Co-host 1
And I'd be very curious, I am.
- [16:57]
Mickey Jo
Very curious to see the fuller version of this performance because I want to know what the thing is that is going to make me connect to it a little bit more. I think there needs to be that specificity of like that's the moment that we really are brought in to caring about all of these characters or whether it's about context at the beginning. Very curious to see this one fully.
- [17:16]
Co-host 1
They are playing Legally Blonde and Mincemeat. Aaron is getting Evita tickets that have just gone on sale. Also, I was going to show you the ice cream. I can't look down here. There you go. They have given out complimentary ice creams and all of the professionals here went absolutely nuts for them.
- [17:34]
Mickey Jo
I love new musicals and ice cream. So into the next session, we started with another one from my initial pitching day which was Ready to Wear. This is a one man musical about Yves St. Laurent. The book, music and lyrics for this have all been written by Rachel Garnett who was hugely impressive when she pitched this both at that initial day and then beam with such an insight into not only what this musical is, but also why it is a musical, why it ought to sing the material. Really sophisticated. If anyone knows the musical in Clay, this reminded me very much of that. At one point there were lyrics that rhymed, make it with placated. Loved that. It's a compelling character study. I was intrigued. I was invested. It incorporates magical realism musically. It was familiar of Maury Yeston, Stephen Schwartz, 90s, Lloyd Webber, all good things. And I think that one, by virtue of the scale of it is probably a lot closer to a fully developed production than a lot of the rest of these shows. I think we might see that one sooner than perhaps the others. Then we have the Rivals of Pinner. So this is a recontextualized reworking of Sheridan's the Rivals and in fact it is a Dessie retelling and it obviously has a very specific lens, but it has universal appeal. I think I was just talking the other day about how the high proportion of South Asian communities in the UK aren't really proportionally represented on stage in musical theatre. This finds the authentic extrapolation for British Asian families from the source material. It describes its own score as Spicy six and I love that. It's smart and it sound. As far as the recontextualization goes, it was deeply charming. And it was maybe the first really great standalone song that I heard all day during that presentation. I'm quite excited about that one. And speaking of specific communities, the next musical was Welsh language inclusive. This was I Pentref, which translates to the village. Let me tell you a little bit more about this one. So the beloved village primary school is closing. A community of quirky misfits. Think Schitt's Creek meets the band's visit, but deeply Welsh rallies to save it. And I'm fascinated by the concept of a genuinely bilingual musical which has the capacity to do some really great stuff theatrically. I'm reminded of those few moments in musicals like Once where there is such a weight and a meaningful. There's some beautiful melodies in this. I wrote down. This is also a great song. I was having a great afternoon. A really powerful community message to be found. And I actually think the scope for this show is much bigger than they were pitching. I think that this could have more cast members, more characters. I think this can and ought to be produced at somewhere like the National Theatre. And this could be more like a Welsh standing at the sky's edge. Finally, we finished Day one with Blocks, the Tetris musical, which I am so excited about. This is another Mickey Jo one to watch. Definitely. This was my favourite thing from the pre pitching day that I was at. It reminded me in a great way of shows like Operation Mincemeat. The title is my favorite thing because this is about the creation of Tetris and also about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. And so Blocks Falling has this delicious, wonderful double meaning. We had a musical theatre song about developmental game theory. I don't know if you want that, but I definitely do. I think it invites a really exciting aesthetic. Any director who is involved in this show is going to be able to have a lot of fun incorporating presumably Tetris type elements into the design and the staging. The orchestrations were fun. I think that this could be very big.
- [20:51]
Co-host 1
That was a really great last session of the day.
- [20:53]
Co-host 2
Day one done.
- [20:54]
Co-host 1
Exciting shows. Day one done. How many musical pitches have we seen today? Aaron James? 6. 14. 8. 14. 14 new musicals pitched. And we have approx. The same number. Tomorrow we're gonna go join the drinks reception with many of the theater industry and we will see you tomorrow.
- [21:13]
Mickey Jo
Bye.
- [21:34]
Co-host 1
And we are back for day two. Good morning, Birmingham. It's time for Beam. Hello. Heading back to the Birmingham Hippodrome for 14 more musical pitches as well as more chats with all the other producers. Theatre Makers, venue representatives and other delegates here today for day two of Beam, learning the lessons of yesterday. I mean, my biggest takeaway is we got here an hour too early. But also, I didn't need to have a slice of cake with lunch because there are ice creams to come later in the afternoon. Imagine if they don't do ice creams today. What a betrayal.
- [22:06]
Co-host 2
And I will get cake.
- [22:07]
Co-host 1
Yeah. Let's go to Beam. Okay, Heading in for more new musicals. We have three pitches. First of all, the third is a 25 minute section, so you really get to get a good feel of the shows with those ones. I've had a pan au chocolat. I'm feeling good. We're here in the Patrick Studio, one of the multiple showcases Ecospace is being used for Beam. We have a very different setup today. There is no wrestling ring, but we do have many instruments on stage. We have percussion.
- [22:35]
Mickey Jo
So day two began with Cricket and the free bugs. Oh, how much fun this was. Now, this had an early rock and roll, 1970s sort of a sound. It depicted a famous insect band who you have never heard of because they're insects. This is high concept gig theatre. I wasn't quite sure if it was intended for a family audience or just, you know, encouraging adults who would enjoy this kind of music and have a nostalgia for this kind of music to reconnect with their inner child. It was like Stereophonic performed by A Bug's Life, I guess. The wordplay was ingenious, though. There were strong Beatles jokes, as you might expect. It was deliberately nostalgic. It was a very original and clear concept. I think it needs one, One really great song. It needs one like breakaway rock pop hit think like that thing you do from the movie of the same name. It needs one fantastic song and that's probably all it needs to just launch this thing. I look forward to seeing these bugs somewhere like the Edinburgh fringe. And it was the morning of gig musicals because we had another one next Vamp, an undead gig musical. Now, vamp, obviously the musical term, but also vampires. Great double meaning here. Smart title. Audience wise. This felt like it was going for The Heather's Stranger Things 6. Audience definitely had a groove. I like that the traditional vampire narrative got a little bit flipped here. We were doing more of a mother daughter story. I wasn't sure what the framing device was. And I think this is a show that would benefit from one with a little more clarity. We had a ballad that was a little bit Evanescence. Y Nice to hear something very different in musical theater. This show would Definitely find an audience. This would definitely get very popular, I feel, and I like the message that we were conveying about this mother accepting change in her daughter. It's like Carrie. If they'd been to therapy and they were willing to do the work, then we have get ready for this title. Clara at the Door With a Revolver. Notable writers on this one because music and lyrics by Ayanna Witter Johnson and book and additional lyrics by the actress Susan Wakoma. This is an inspiring true crime story adapted from the book of the same name. It's murder mystery meets courtroom drama, which I think is a great one to punch. It was fun to hear songs written for low vocals. That's not something we hear here nearly often enough. The music that we heard was a little rested to tv. I wanted it to have something more solid and more uptempo. But this show has the ambition to be the first West End musical written by black women. And as they said that, I couldn't really believe that we haven't had that yet. I mean, we've had so few western musicals written by women, period. And so that obviously is more than overdue. And just like that, we're into our next venue. It was very popular. Slightly over subscribed here yesterday afternoon, so.
- [25:12]
Co-host 1
So we are happy to be in the room.
- [25:14]
Mickey Jo
Then we had Elbow Deep. Oh, this was the one about sheep farming. This was about sheep farming and also about loss and grief. This is a great story. This is a really smartly conceived story because they are taking on this farm and they're learning about lambing, birthing these lambs. And it's the parallel between that and their own struggle to have a child and become parents and start building a family. There's a little bit of a fish out of water element to it as well as one of them knows about it and grew up with it and the other one doesn't. I'm curious about the sheep. I'm curious about how you invoke the sheep. Whether it is symbolically or otherwise, what really worked is that we were all picturing it and we were all feeling it. Just as they were talking about, like the concept of like a song, I think it was called How Many Ways Are There to Lamb a Ewe. And just as they were mentioning these things, it was conjuring images in the mind so there wouldn't necessarily have to be some literal depiction of sheep on stage because the writing is doing that already. Next up, we had a fun family show. This was Layla and Captain Doom. It had a really catchy and cute theme song. It's aimed at kids 4 to 9. It's one hour long. It's very adolescent, very cutesy. Hurricane Jane. I can still remember this song. Oh, I can't this honestly. Okay. Beam was back in May. It is late July. As I am telling you this, I don't remember many of these songs, but Hurricane Jane just came right back into my mind. That's a well written melody. I thought it was really great. There was a beautiful message in it about a mother, daughter relationship. This is about a cartoon villain who accidentally is brought to life and comes through the TV screen of this young girl who is watching her favorite cartoon. And she's got to try and help him to do an earnest good deed so that he can return back to his world. And the dynamic between the two of them becomes very fun as he's saying, like, no, this will never work. I'm just too evil.
- [27:00]
Co-host 1
Ah.
- [27:01]
Mickey Jo
And she's trying to help him. It's very sweet. It's very charming. I would go and see this, honestly. And like I said, I still have that song in my head. I would like to hear it again. Then we had bog bodies.
- [27:12]
Co-host 1
I'm not even.
- [27:13]
Mickey Jo
I can't. I can't possibly describe this plot to you. I'm going to have to read. Read some of their synopsis. Loosely based on an Irish language novel, it's about corpses in coffins in a graveyard in Ireland. It's Follies meets the Real Housewives of New York City, but set in an Irish graveyard and everyone's dead. There was some genuinely balmy lyrics. It was musically eclectic. Some operetta ballads, some folk with nods to Irish music. As you would expect, the vocal style was classical. It wasn't overtly comedic in a way that you might be anticipating based on having just heard that description. Over My Dead Body is a good lyrical hook. When they use it, it's definitely offbeat. It subverts Irish stereotypes. By its own admission, it confronts the taboo of death. And I think it's definitely an interesting and obviously incredibly unique concept. Worth exploring, worth developing a little further. I'm intrigued by it. Next was Chasing Icarus, one of the other ones that I had previously seen a fuller version of in a workshop presentation. It's a majority genderqueer company telling a story about the historic castrati. The way in which it does that is to present two friends vying for the role of a lifetime. One a young unit struggling with stage fright, the other non binary individual disguised as a castrato to sing at a time when women weren't allowed. And it obviously speaks very pertinently to the contemporary challenges experienced by the trans non binary community. Interestingly, there are a couple of shows at the moment doing castrati stories. I liked the collision of electronica and classical. I thought that was very unique as far as the identity of this show would go. Character driven story with ambition, romance and rivalry, which I recall being being a little contrived. I wonder if there needs to be just one fewer character because we have like this friends to rivals thing. But there's also an additional rival and there's a lot of different motivations going on. I think it could stand to be.
- [29:03]
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- [29:40]
Mickey Jo
Just like that. That 10% simplified perhaps.
- [29:43]
Co-host 1
And we have been outside to go and get our lunch today. It is a combination of things from Tim Hortons and Leon. I have a chicken stack sandwich and a cookie and I'm very excited about it.
- [29:56]
Mickey Jo
Then we had another adaptation musical this time of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close with an actor musician cast. It was funny, it was charming. I wasn't familiar with the source material beforehand. It's a little bit magical. It was a nice marriage of book and score. This is something that I noticed more so in this than anything else that I had seen or heard previously. I like that we were seeing this through the unique perspective of a child's eyes. It's emotionally quite heavy going from the sound of it. And I think this is another one that would benefit quite quickly from one really great melodic hook. I don't know that I heard that in this presentation, but the whole thing felt pretty sophisticated. And we also have to think about marketability with these shows and with new musicals as well. And something that already has that kind of name recognition is potentially going to do quite well. Next up, completely different Hong Kong After Midnight. This was the true story of a gay Eurasian who opened A Disco in Hong Kong is what I have written down based on first hand accounts. It follows Gordon's battle against police, triad gangs and addiction as he and his community fight for a place to get together and dance in the city they call home. Obviously this has a disco score and there was definitely something here. For a lot of these. These original narratives, I felt like they needed to be simplified. This one I think could be extended even further and we could add in more layers, although that was just potentially beyond what was explained and presented at the pitch. I liked that there was a transference of political power going on in the background. Some of the lyrics I thought were a little on the nose, but I really did like the music. Next was Flat Earth the Musical. There are multiple Flat Earth musicals being written, pitched and developed at the moment. I was at another Flat Earth musical workshop not too long ago. This one is very comic. There is a song called Overwhelming Scientific Evidence that I wrote was a bit of a banger. It reminded me of Giggle Mug Theatre who wrote, I believe Scouts the Musical. Also the Timpson musical and the Jaffa Cake musical that was at Fringe last year and also this year. I did say this feels tonally so silly that it would probably only exist within Edinburgh Fringe type spaces, but it was a story about community and about belonging and how sometimes that is belonging to a Flat Earth society. The way into this was was it was one person who lived on the border between two very divided parts of a town like the north and the South End, and wasn't accepted by either, but wanted to join a club and ended up becoming the one member needed by the Flat Earth society. From what I remember, what they had there was really fun and played really well. I enjoyed this one an awful lot.
- [32:29]
Co-host 1
The eclectic nature of Beam is best characterized by the group of music insects behind me in conversation, just networking about their musical insect show.
- [32:39]
Mickey Jo
Then we had Sheltered.
- [32:40]
Co-host 1
Oh.
- [32:41]
Mickey Jo
Oh, I loved this one. I really liked this. Okay, so this was a kitchen sink musical set in a seaside town, which already is a concept that we've not heard enough of. Big working class ethos behind this. This is actually. I wrote down a music style that feels modern, original and relevant. It features no live band, perhaps controversial, especially because of the heavily produced grime and garage sound. Not something that we hear a lot of in musical theatre. This was one of the most compelling pitches that I heard throughout Beam this year, talking about domestic abuse and about identity and a villain who is also a victim in everyone's humanity. I'm shady with wkd. And I feel like I kind of loved it. Beneath that I wrote strong lyrics. Tbh. So there you go. I am really excited about this and excited about the desire to put honest working class British stories on stage in a very honest way that isn't exploitative. And that's what the purpose of this show is. And I think that that's brilliant. Then we had others. This is another sort of allegorical show that talks about differences and being othered. In this we have characters who are referred to as squints, as something of a slur. There are characters that have arbitrary differences in this imaginary tendency town called Mysteriousness. It's deliberately scored for gender, expansive casting, which is a sensational thing. The aesthetic was described as Tony Kushner meets panto, which is some of the most unexpected collection of words that I have ever heard in my life. And I immediately need to know so much more about that. This was the best trans allegory song sung at one point I think I have ever heard in my entire life. And I think it's a song that had the capacity to be the very needed, the very essential. I am what I am for the trans community in the same way that I Am what I am was so big for the gay community. The penultimate pitch of the day was Pit Stop and Wash. This was a romantic comedy musical with a rural Brazilian setting. I never quite understood why we were in Brazil, but we did have a bit of a sense of samba in the music at one point. It was very charming, very warm, very vibrant. It's another one that felt a little wacky and felt like totally a family show, but more aimed towards towards an adult audience. It features explicitly diverse characters which once again is a lovely and important thing to hear at a writing level. And the plot is that Bruna, our protagonist, is desperate to use the magical washing machine to find the woman of her dreams. Will her impulsive journey to the remote laundrette have what she is looking for? I have several follow up questions about this show, but I am intrigued. Another one. Deeply original, very unique and it has a real charm to it. Finally then, 73 seconds was the very last pitch that I saw. Written and composed by Jordan Lee Smith. On a cold January morning in 1986, millions watched as the NASA shuttle Challenger soared skyward, only to explode 73 seconds after liftoff. Among the stunned was Barbara Morgan. Back up to Krista McAuliffe, the teacher in space. Aboard that fateful flight, Barbara receives an offer from NASA to become a full time astronaut. Memories of Krista and the post accident investigation surface, she's forced to confront her deepest trauma as she decides whether to take the risk and fly. That immediate concept of exploring the Challenger disaster through the perspective of this woman who could have, under different circumstances been on it is fascinating. There's a brilliant song in it called Spouses of Astronauts, which some of you may remember being performed at my Miki Joe Theatre live show earlier this year. I wrote down Great Comet, Gypsy, Piazza Tesori. In terms of the musical identity of the whole thing, I thought it was really stunning, really sophisticated and yeah, the most kind of of like rapturous, gorgeous music that perhaps I heard at Beam. And that brings me to an end of the two days that we spent at Beam 2025. Like I said, this is biannual, so the next one is not going to be until 2027. But in the meantime I look forward to hearing more about all of the shows that I got to see little snippets of this year. I am very excited to watch them all continue to develop and grow. As always, it is one of my greatest passions to support new British musical theatre and thank you for helping to do that by watching this video. If you're particularly curious about any of these shows, feel free to ask any other questions in the comments section down below and I will do my best to direct you to where you can find out more about each of them. But keep them in mind because these could potentially be some of the big musical theatre hits of tomorrow carrying on maybe even as far as the West End, maybe beyond, maybe even to Broadway. In the meantime though, thank you so much for watching this beam 2025 vlog recap. I hope that you enjoyed, and I hope as always, that everyone is staying safe and that you have a staging.
- [37:19]
Co-host 1
Day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.
- [37:33]
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Mickey Jo
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Mickey Jo
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