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Mickey-Jo went to see A KNIGHT'S TALE the musical | What the world premiere production is like on stage
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Mickey Jo
Is it true, Father? Can someone really turn 2001 action adventure film featuring medieval jousting into a successful 2025 jukebox musical? Well, here's how they're doing it. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you're listening on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am a professional theatre critic, content creator and commentator here on social media. And today we are going to be discussing the world premiere production of the brand new stage musical adaptation of the 2001 film A Knight's Tale, which starred Paul Bettany and Heath Ledger was a huge favourite in my childhood home. Now I recently had the chance to attend the press night performance of the show's first ever run at the Manchester Opera House Regional theatre in the uk. North of the uk, the same regional venue in fact where the musical and Juliet had its world premiere production before heading to the West End and subsequently to Canada to Broadway off on its current UK tour. And there are in fact a few comparisons that we could make between a show like Anne Juliet and Knight's Tale. But I'm getting just a little ahead of myself today. I need to let you know I'm not going to be reviewing this production because I believe that it's still going to develop a little bit further and I feel as though if I have like my final word on it now, then that precludes me from being able to give you a sense of what it's going to become and reviewing it at a later date when it possibly evolves, which I do suspect is something that might happen with this show. Instead, what I thought I would do as someone who is a huge fan of the film and who has been watching this very carefully, I made a video here when the news emerged that this was happening. I made another video when I visited the rehearsals for the first time and got a little bit of a glimpse as to how they were doing this and got to chat to the creatives and the cast. I thought I would let you know simply what this production is like and there are many things to talk about. What exactly is the music like? How are they turning this film into a two act stage musical? What changes have they made to the plot, to individual characters? How has the tone shifted and most importantly the elephant in the room if you like? Well, that elephant is in fact a horse. The question is how are they portraying a horse on stage? Nay, multiple horses. I just said nay in the middle of a sentence about horses unironically. I am the horse I am the horse in the room. Anyway, this introduction has become a joust all of its own. Basically, I went to go see A Knight's Tale, the Musical, and I'm gonna tell you everything about it. There will be spoilers, there will be plenty of information about the show, and while I am not currently reviewing it as such here on YouTube, I would still be very intrigued to learn what you all thought of it in the comments section down below. Did you have a chance to see A Knight's Tale in Manchester? Let us know what you thought in the comments. In the meantime, here are all the details. Let me tell you everything about A Knight's Tale, the musical. So I think where we ought to begin here is by talking about how they've adapted the story. And, you know, it's a very close. It's a very faithful adaptation. Many of the best lines of dialogue are kept in their entirety. Some are tinkered with ever so slightly. There's a line that Mr. Geoffrey Chauth has towards the end of the film where he says, my lords, my ladies, and everyone else not sitting on a cushion. Actually, I don't know if that's his final speech or one of the earlier ones. In any case, that's been adapted to be a little bit more lgbtq, beyond the gender binary inclusive, which is not the only way in which the show has become a little more queer. But we'll get to that when we talk about the characters. My point is that this is a pretty faithful adaptation of the screenplay, and Brian Helgeland, who wrote the film, has been very involved in the adaptation. He spoke to the creatives and he said that they. The most important thing was to remember that the story, the key focus of the story, the soul of the piece, if you like, is about the notion of can a person change their stars? And can a person, you know, ascend to something beyond the rank of their birth in this feudal system society in medieval times? And while he's been very involved in the process, he has not actually adapted this personally for the stage, which is something that we see occasionally. I was just earlier today or yesterday for you, potentially talking about Muriel's Wedding, the musical, which had been adapted for the stage by the original writer, I think 13 going on 30. The musical, @ least when I saw the Workshop, had the same situation. But this has been adapted by comedy writer Brona C. Titley, and you can feel the British comedy bones of the thing. It's funnier than it is absolutely anything else. It's comedy that we're really Focusing on. And, you know, I would say it's almost a comedy film. It just does have those moments of sincerity that exist alongside that. And some of the more, you know, action adventure moments as well. Now, with the musical version, we begin with the image of a young boy. This is young William Thatcher, our protagonist. He begins by singing. I'll tell you a little bit more about that in just a moment. But we get a little bit of the backstory, a little flash of that, and then we accelerate to the moment. Sort of the ignition of this story and of this quest of sorts, where William, along with two other squires named Roland and Wat, discover that the lord that they are serving has died in the middle of a jousting tournament that he was about to win, provoking William in order to attain those winning riches for the three of them to come up with the idea that he can put on the deceased knight's armour and ride in his place, and all he need do is not get knocked off his horse and they'll win. It's not quite that simple, however, because young William, son of John Thatcher, despite the humble circumstances of his birth, has always dreamed of becoming a knight. And once asked his father as a young boy, is it possible for someone to truly change their stars? Meaning could he dream of ascending to a higher station? And after convincing his friends and enlisting them as co conspirators and comrades, they all come up with a scheme together where they will pass him off as a nobleman because only noble lords are allowed to compete in these tournaments, and he will ascend to glory and riches beyond their wildest dreams. Now, the show, just like the film, sees William going through several different tournaments. He goes through these at a slightly faster pace, and he encounters along the way an adversary, a nemesis in the form of the villainous Count Adhemar, and a love interest in the form of Princess Jocelyn. It's with her that we start to see a little bit of variation from the film. Both because she arrives a decent amount earlier that first tournament that he is finishing in the place of Sir Hector, he actually meets her there, and she wasn't in attendance there in the film, as I recall. Or if he doesn't meet her there, at least we meet her there. She also is unaccompanied throughout all of this. In the film, when they interact, for much of it, he's interacting with through her. I don't know what you call her. Handmaiden, her lady in waiting, whoever she may have been. She seemed nice. But in the stage musical, to afford a Little bit more immediacy to the interactions between William and Jocelyn. Admar and Jocelyn, as the two of them each vie for her affections. They both speak to her directly and she's sort of just wandering about and strolling around the town. What can I say? She's a down to earth princess showing a lot of leg along the way. They do meet a new accomplice in Geoffrey Chaucer in exactly the same circumstances that they do in the film. I suspected that this might have been change because in the film they find Paul Bettany as Chaucer walking naked down the road. That's where they happen upon him before he ends up convincing them that they're going to need his help in order to forge false patents of nobility and pass off William as a genuine lord. Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein and Max Bennett, who plays Chaucer in this production, is also met in similar circumstances of undress. But shockingly, and here's a spoiler alert, he actually arrives by walking through, through the auditorium, walking through the stalls. And there is, you know, some degree to which the really important parts are covered, but the rest of it is. It's pretty on display. Now a key difference as far as the character of Chaucer and his dialogue is concerned is that he is able to perceive the audience. He is, after all, the father of English literature. And he, in the film is this brilliant oratorical force who helps William to advance by commencing all of his jousts and all of his competition entries with these brilliant, compelling speeches and winning over the audiences with his immense storytelling talent and innate theatricality. So it only makes sense that in the stage musical he can see the audience and he can speak to us directly. And he narrates in some of the stickier sections where we have to get through a lot of joust matches quite quickly, or where we have to go through various different countries. We have something of a montage in the middle, which they kind of do in the film as well. Back to Jocelyn. And here the spoiler alerts continue. There is, from what I believe, and it's been a while since I've seen the film, but this seemed to play a little differently to me. A little bit of a rearrangement of some of her scenes with William because the two of them have fallings out and then they make up again and then they have fallings out and then they make up again. It's a very on again, off again thing. But she, after one of his jousting injuries, goes to visit him in his tent, and the two of them share a night of passion. This is a lot more overt in the stage musical than it is in the film. Only this ends in a sour note when she begins to believe that the relationship between the two of them might not be entirely genuine, that he might be keeping things from her, including his real name, which is William, and not Ulrich, which honestly much better name. Like lying to your prospective romantic partner is obviously not a great thing. But I do think personally in that position, if I was to find out the name was William and not really Ulrich, a little part of me would be like, thank God, because that was honestly kind of a problem for me. Now I'm sure that in the film, and maybe I'm completely wrong about this, that happened after he tried to upon apologize to her and try to win her favor by sending a message, sending a love letter that he and his friends had written together based on all of their experiences of loves of the past. And his friend Watt had returned with a kiss, actually kissing him personally to convey that message. I'm sure that happened before all the stuff in the tent because it kind of. Otherwise, it kind of feels like putting the cart before the horse, if you get what I'm saying. Like, the kiss means a little less after everything that they've very clearly done on stage. And it's also impl. I don't mean via the confirmation of nudity. And that seemed to suggest that this is not a family friendly show. It is a family friendly show, but, you know, it's also ever so slightly risque, like many a great pantomime and pantomime. Honestly, not a terrible comparison, especially because of this show's relationship to its music, which we are almost ready to talk about. I do want to talk about a little subplot with Edward the Black Prince. This is a really interesting part of the film where William is told that a knight that he is currently facing is actually Edward the Prince in disguise. And it would be essentially treasonous for him to joust against him. And that's why Edwards in disguise, because he wants to be able to compete fairly. And no one, no one wants to ride a horse at him with a stick in their hands. And don't you. Don't you hate when that happens? And in the film he's told this sort of in secrecy, and the audience don't find out until after William makes the lone decision by himself after being told that he shouldn't ride to head off anyway. And Edward is pleased by this. And the two of them joust And William wins. And then he takes off his helmet and he's like, you knew who I was. And then the crowd goes, ah, it's the prince. In the show, the revelation comes a lot more publicly and William has a little bit more of a conversation about, like, am I going to do it or aren't I? He also, and this is what sort of brings us into the end of Act 1. And the tension of an interval has to consider what Jocelyn asks him to do, which is to lose the competition in order to prove his love to her, rather than, as so many knights have in the past, offering to win on her behalf with an incredibly high stakes wager that his friends have made, which is conditional on his victory. And that's always going to be a big question with taking films and adapting them for the stage is how do we put an interval into this? How do we shift this into a separated two act structure? And that's how they do it here. And so William enters that crisis as we all go off to go and have a glass of house wine and an ice cream tub. And then he just sort of picks it up as we begin the second act. Although it's not what opens the second act. And having talked through the majority of the differences in the plot, I think it's time for us to head over to the world of music and this show's musical identity. So I mentioned it briefly already, but this show does not feature an original score of new music and lyrics. This is what we call a jukebox musical, which is to say that it is using existing songs in order to tell the story. Think Mamma Mia. Although that uses songs entirely by one artist, by abba, so think more like. And Juliet, although that uses songs entirely by one producer, Max Martin. Think perhaps about shows like Cruel Intentions. It uses entirely songs from the 90s or the handful of other jukebox musicals that exist. If anyone's seen the show Scissorhands, that's quite similar in terms of the musical identity that it has. A Knight's tale inherits this. If you think this is a slightly strange choice for a medieval story, it inherits it from the film and the film's iconic soundtrack. Because not only does the film feature contemporary music in its soundtrack, but it also acknowledges it a few times in the narrative. At the very beginning, you have this iconic opening scene in which spectators are waiting to watch a jousting match and they are stamping on the stands and they are beating out the iconic beats of the Queen song We Will Rock youk as the whole thing begins, that is also how A Knight's Tale, the musical begins. That is the song which young William is singing at the very beginning of the show. Another standout musical moment from the film A Knight's Tale is when William attends this formal dance, hoping to spend more time with Princess Jocelyn. And he is prompted by shady Count Adhemar to show everyone a dance from his native Geldaland. And William flounders a little bit, but is rescued by Jocelyn. And the traditional medieval music segues brilliantly into dating David Bowie's golden years. And the dance shifts to something a little bit more contemporary and anachronistic as well. And the whole idea with this, it's not dissimilar to the concept behind Hamilton, really is allowing this story to feel as urgent and vital and cool as it would have to them at the time. Because, you know, that's whatever the style of dance, the historic style of dance, the historic style of music is going to feel exactly that to us. It's going to feel historic. But if you have the crowds in the stands stamping their feet to We Will Rock youk, you understand their excitement more from a comparable contemporary perspective. And that, I think, is what they're going for with the rest of A Knight's Tale. And just like with those particular musical choices, there is a similar playfulness to the other songs that they have added into the show. I've read a little bit of response online of people seeming to suggest that there isn't much of a connection between the songs. It's not like they're all from one particular era or even that they're all one particular genre. But I think what spoke to me, and I'm not going to tell you every single song that's in it, I don't want to spoil that for you because there's some fun little twists and surprises. But what I took from it is that they all feel like bonafide British dance floor classics. These are all songs that you would hear on a great wedding playlist. And I'll give you a taste. We have a little bit of Whitney Houston, we have a little bit of Bonnie Tyler, we have a little bit of surprise S Club 7. They actually revealed that at the press event. So if you've already watched my other video, then you'll know that already we also the club staple that is Mr. Brightside. And so it's a compilation of bangers with A Knight's Tale. And there are moments of sincerity as well. But for the most part, this is kind of the musical identity of the Thing which feels not dissimilar to and Juliet because likewise, even in and Juliet, the slower emotional ballad moments are still that little bit campy. I mean, it's Britney and Celine Dion in that show. Simon Hale is the musical supervisor, responsible for orchestrations and arrangements. And the songs have all been been adapted a little bit for a theatrical context. Some of them more light handedly than others. There is one brilliant moment with a chorus of nuns singing the beginning of Dance with somebody with Jocelyn at the front taking the solo. And there's also an absolutely spectacular show stopping opening number for the second act performed by the character of Kate, played by the brilliant Emily Benjamin. And she is on a little balcony situation that rises up out of the orchestra pit. And she, a pioneering female blacksmith, is welding the new armor that she has convinced William to let her make. And behind her on stage is an ensemble of badass female blacksmiths. And we have fire coming up out of the orchestra pit and we have sparks coming down from the ceiling. It's a really cool moment. But yeah, I feel like that's about as much as I want to tell you about the songs in this show. There is a moment towards the end where Chaucer, in lieu of delivering his very impactful final speech, moves into a song instead of which, you know, makes sense because we're musicalizing the story of the film. What I will add to that is that as with many similar jukebox musicals, there are of course moments where the lyrics don't exactly align to the circumstances of the characters. Do they feel a little more noticeable in A Knight's Tale than in some other shows? Perhaps just a little bit. But I do defend the choice to do this as a jukebox musical. I think that extrapolates from the key identity of the film in a way that makes sense. The thing with this is that you will always have to balance the. The silliness of it and the playfulness of it with that sense of sincerity. And that's going to be the challenge with developing the show moving forwards. But I dare say it wasn't the biggest challenge when first considering how to bring it to the stage. That challenge has to have been how to do jousting. So after months of speculation, here's how they're doing it now. If you've been following this from the beginning, I was absolutely fascinated about the concept of how on earth they were going to do jousting on horseback on stage. Were they going to have actual horses? What on earth was this going to look like, were they going to have warhorse style puppets? So the actors are standing on top of a puppet puppeteered by like three different people. I mean, the manpower alone, Lots to consider. But when I went to the show's rehearsal event a few weeks ago, I discovered that they had a slightly different solution. And in chatting to the creative team, director Rachel Kavanagh and choreographer Matt Cole, it became apparent that they had spent a long time shopping a lot of different ideas about how on earth they were going to do this. The one which they arrived at are these sort of bouncy stilts for the actors who are portraying characters on horseback to wear. That's what we saw in the rehearsal event. And they were wearing sunglasses in place of visors rather than helmets. And while I couldn't appreciate at that point what the full effect and the full visual was going to be, you could tell even then that the movement that they were achieving on these slightly bouncy stilts and the way that they'd been clearly directed to use them actually looked very accurate to the idea of charging on horseback. As far as the visors instead of helmets go, a helmet is really not a very friendly thing to an audience and to sight lines. And as soon as we put helmets on a, you're going to have issues with microphones, which is why so many hats that actors put on have separate microphones attached to them as well. But also you're obscuring your face either from the sides or entirely. It gets very hard to tell who is who and all this stuff. So they're not using helmets and they're not really. They're not wearing full suits of armor either. What completes the jousting look, though, is these entire horse puppets. I have no idea how lightweight these things must be to be attached to them basically as costuming. You don't see the horse's legs, but they are draped in these sort of this medieval drapeage that forms like a curtain around the outside of the horse. If it sounds silly, it doesn't look silly at all. It looks fantastic. It's really convincing visual and they've done a great job. And, you know, kudos to everyone who has come together on the creative team to bring about jousting on stage. It's not quite as violent and impactful as it's depicted in the film because, you know, it can't be having got the horseback jousting to look so great. The shortcoming of this might be the moments of impact that we don't see all of the splintering wood and, you know, these moments of crashing and these aggressive blows. But I will say props to John Maddox for suspended illusions. Props to the fight director. Props to Gabriella Slade for costume design, if she was responsible for the horses, or at the very least, for dressing the horses. Let's talk a little bit more about Gabriella Slade's costumes and the entire production design while we're here. Gabriella Slade, who recently won an Olivier Award for her design work on the new production of Starlight Express in the West End, who is, of course, well known as the costume designer behind the music musical 6. You can still see a little bit of that aesthetic, certainly the bold uses of color. We have a lot of neon yellow in the ensemble costumes here, echoing some of the yellows of William's outfitting and of his friends. It is not a traditional medieval aesthetic. It's a sort of a bohemian interpretation of that. Very similar, really, to what we see in Six, only a little bit more rock and roll and a little less pop. Everything is a little longer, a little grungier, more like thigh high boots and slips up the skirts, but a lot of big sleeves. A lot of the medieval imagery that we know Gabriella Slade can conjure in a contemporary costume design. I really like the costumes. I do think, and I'm trying not to review the production, I am so, so sorry. I do think that if they're thinking about things to move forwards, that the ability to differentiate between nobility and peasants gets on occasion, a little bit tricky. And we don't see, like this. It's wild trans transformation of William at the beginning. Like, he gets changed and his hair gets tidied up a little bit. But because I think everyone has quite a shared aesthetic, you don't necessarily get that sense of division. They look great, though. I do really enjoy these costumes. I always enjoy Gabriella Slade's work. I think it's bold, I think it's fun, and I think she was the perfect person for this in terms of the experience that she already had, in terms of the brilliant work she'd already done in terms of combining the historic and the contemporary temporary. Now the actual proscenium of the stage is surrounded by swords pointing inwards and all of these different crests on shields, which is brilliant. We have a neon version of the Knight's Tale logo. They're leaning very much into this pink and blue neon. We have multiple levels at the back with sort of stands and a raised walkway. And for the rest of it, it's just set pieces that are brought on Very often it's just some stands and it's just sort of the thing that goes in the middle of the jousting for the horses to go on either side of. I don't know enough about jousting really to be talk about this in a video. Should have researched jousting first. Honestly, you'd be amazed the things I have to google. But the reason for that is because there is so much dance and it's a big cast and it's a big ensemble and they are really dancing. If you've seen a Matt Cole choreographed show before, Newsies being one of his best known, you will know that they are dancing, dancing. They are really dancing. They are going for it and they have songs that invite that kind of level of exciting, dynamic, high energy choreography. But that's a big part of why I think audiences are going to be really satisf by this show and have probably been walking away from productions going wow. Because the staging of these numbers really has a wow factor. Now, as we've spent a lot of time talking about the direction, I will spend just a few moments considering the tone of the thing. I do think it is a shade less sincere than the film. I don't know that it hammers all of the emotional beats in the same way. There is at least one scene, the one in which they are traveling back to England and they're all sharing how many years it's been since they were last there, that is sort of absent from the stage production. And that moment is no longer played for emotional sincerity. It's the beginning of a song and it also has a little bit of that quality that you find in a lot of jukebox musicals where a song begins. And recognition of that song, even if it's not necessarily a funny song, triggers a little bit of laughter in the audience because the concept of hearing that modern song in an anachronistic context text is a little funny. If I told you it was maybe like 7% pantomime, that might give you a fairly good sense of what to expect. Finally then, I'm not reviewing the performances, but I am going to talk to you about characters. William, I think, is just as much the character that we know from the film realized on stage. There is more change with a character like Jocelyn, who is given a little more of her own autonomy and independence in the stage version. But she remains a slightly trifling character because she spends so much of it, so much of the first act, at least in dialogue, with Adhemar and William. Just as a Playful contrarian, just trying to trip them up in matches of wits. Very Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing style, but a little more overtly flirtatious. She also has a little more sexual agency as well. And, you know, good for her. The biggest character shift has to be the character of Watt, who along with Roland, is one of William's closest friends turned accomplices. And there's been a gender shift with this charact portrayed on stage by the actress Ava Scott, but not necessarily explicitly imagined here as a female character, what is only ever referred to with gender neutral pronouns. And it feels a little bit like a queer interpretation of that character, which works really well. You can roll your eyes at this if you want to. I think it's a brilliant choice. And it also invites a little bit of a romantic subplot with the character of Kate, who was not a queer character in the film, at least not explicitly. She talked an ex husband. She talks about the same ex husband in the stage musical, but that's not necessarily where her story ends. And there's possibly more to her. I mean, she's a badass female blacksmith in medieval times, for crying out loud. You can't tell me that she hasn't, you know, had certain inclinations. And there is, by the end of the thing, some satisfaction to that flirtation. And I'm always happy to see lesbian acknowledgement in musical theatre because for a long time there wasn't nearly enough of it. Queer relationships and puppet horses got away winning. I'd say a handful of other characters are also a little less intense. Prince Edward is a little less mysterious and brooding. Certainly by the time that he is revealed, Adhemar is a little more panto villain. This is Oliver Thompsett's first real out and out villain role, I believe Oliver Thompsett, who of course also originated the role of William Shakespeare in the musical and Juliet, he's a little less intense than he was in the film, but no less evil. Oh, and Max Bennet as chaucer, can't forget Mr. William Chaucer. I would say he is just slightly more camp. And that arises from him being in conversation with the audience. And because he can talk to the audience and can see the audience and walks through the audience naked, that first conversation is going to be an acknowledgment of that. So there's a lot of playful moments where there's a little bit of flirtation with him and certainly the people in the first few rows, which I can tell you, not a bad place to sit anyhow. That is everything that I think I can tell you at this stage about A Knight's Tale. If I have made some glaring omission of detail in this video, then you're just going to have to let me know in the comments section down below and I will do my best to bring you that information. The only other thing to say about this do we think that we are going to see A Knight's Tale on stage again? And where do we think we are going to see it next? Because this was, as with many other new musicals recently, a fairly brief regional tryout production, it will only have been on stage for about a month by the time that the run ends. I do think it seems pretty obvious that we are going to see this again. It seems like they're vying for the West End. You can tell that just in how much money has been spent. It is a huge production. It looks fantastic. The scale of the thing is really exciting. The energy, the music, the choreography. I think this is going to be a really crowd pleasing show that inevitably has to make its way to the West End. I think it would also do very well regionally touring around the country. I think this feels like it has international tour in its future. I wouldn't be surprised if it had the same kind of trajectory as and Juliet. Not to keep comparing the two, but I think they could achieve similar things. Honestly, admittedly, I'm not too sure on what the awareness of A Knight's Tale is worldwide. So international viewers, if you are watching this video, if you could let us know in the comments how aware you are of A Knight's Tale as well, that would be very helpful. But stay tuned to see what happens with the show. Wouldn't surprise me if this ends up in the West End. I would like to see that happen as and when it does, I will be back. I'll be able to give you my full review. In the meantime, as always, I would love to know what you thought. Let us know about that in the comments. And thank you for listening to this. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a Stagey Day. For 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theater. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a Stagey day. Subscribe.