★★★

“Impressively staged, it is indeed truly fantastical.”

What started out as a bedtime story for his nine-year-old son quickly evolved into a global publishing phenomenon that outstripped the writer Rick Riordan’s dreams. A five-book series of fantasy novels was followed by two feature films, a television series and video game. In an age where you can’t turn a stone without finding a musical under it, this was the natural next step. Joe Tracz is behind the book, while Rob Rokicki has adapted Riordan’s take on the Greek myths with a high energy bolt of musical lightning, that struck Broadway in 2020 and is now lighting up London’s stage.

“The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical”, for those who don’t know (and I didn’t… I must have been living under that upturned stone), is a reimagined mash-up of the Greek myths, crash landed in the twenty-first century. Percy Jackson, a bit of a misfit who has a habit of being expelled from school, discovers he is the ‘half-blood’ son for Poseidon. While reluctantly attending a summer camp for demigods, he quickly finds himself on a dangerous quest to locate and bring back Zeus’s lost Master Bolt. Teaming up with fellow demigods, Grover and Annabeth, they go on all sorts of adventures, escaping hellhounds, furies, lotus-eaters and narrative logic. Naturally Percy returns a hero (that’s no spoiler) with the lightning bolt intact and a soaring tune full of well-worn messages.

Despite some genuinely funny moments, it takes itself rather seriously in a teen kind of way. The opening number drums into us that ‘The Gods Are Real’ without any apparent irony, as though we should be taking notes. Being normal is the real myth here. The things that make you different are the things that make you strong (read that sentence like you’re belting a rock anthem, and you get the picture). The musical numbers are delivered throughout in a storm of pizzazz, the volume turned up high and, although many numbers blend into another, the tunes have enough snap, crackle and pop to become catchy earworms. Director and choreographer, Lizzi Gee, keeps the pace fast and furious while the cast crank up the fun-factor to feverish levels.

Morgan Gregory gives a well-balanced mix of nerdiness and fearlessness to the hapless hero, Percy Jackson. Vocally cutting through the bombast of the band he skilfully takes us on his epic journey with him. Lizzy-Rose Esin-Kelly is a gutsy Annabeth, the daughter of Athena while Angus Benstead’s Grover is a nervous satyr. There is much multi-rolling within the ensemble cast, and many costume changes. Caricature invariably displaces nuance, but amid the chaos Paisley Billing, as Percy’s mother (among other characters) smooths and softens the action with her controlled performance and expressive, velvet voice.

But for the most part, there is a cartoon quality to the production in which grating tones and shouty voices dominate. It is as though our attention span is assumed to be low, with the rapid-fire, episodic progression of events that whisk us through Percy’s quest as he runs up against Gods and Monsters in equal measure. We end up feeling a little giddy but can’t really complain as it’s nothing compared to what the performers must be feeling. A whirlwind of a show, that tosses its plotlines into the tornado with so much abandon that we lose track and ultimately cease to care. Visually it is a treat, and it probably helps to be familiar with Riordan’s novels. Impressively staged, it is indeed truly fantastical. With clearer storytelling, more light and shade and more respect for the mythology, it could also be fantastic.

BIRDSONG

Alexandra Palace Theatre

★★

“The play is a streamlined version of the book, but this production does not bring out the pain and inhumanity of war”

Alexandra Palace Theatre is the final venue for Birdsong, after its long regional UK tour.

Alexandra Palace Theatre is London’s oldest new theatre, originally built in 1875, falling into disrepair and eventually re-opening in 2018 after a major refurbishment bringing the huge auditorium back to life in arrested decay. It is a big theatre to fill and with a lot of the seating on the flat it is lucky the stage is high. The slopping seats are a long way back from the stage in this vast space. But it is beautiful and majestic.

Now to Birdsong… This production marks the thirtieth anniversary of Sebastian Faulks’s epic and searing WWI novel – and fifteen years since the West End premiere of the stage adaptation by Rachel Wagstaff.

After seven months on the road, this current production is tired and needs to be put to sleep. The cast, most playing several characters with several dodgy accents, have been allowed to stretch out their lines and pauses – it needed desperate tightening by the director Alastair Whatley, and at over three hours this production is too long.

The opening scene is in present day Amiens, France, with a young man looking for a WWI soldier’s grave. It then moves to the bourgeois charm of pre-war Amiens where Stephen Wraysford (James Esler) is a guest staying with René Azaire (Sargon Yelda), his wife Isabelle (Charlie Russell) and his teenage daughter Lisette (Gracie Follows) to learn about Azaire’s textile factory. The factory is failing, the workers are rebelling, the Azaire’s marriage is toxic, and Stephen starts a passionate affair with the unhappy Isabelle. The affair is discovered and Act One closes with them running away together.

Act Two opens in the 1916 trenches in France, with hammy acting and singing Hold Your Hand Out Naughty Boy, a music hall favourite, sung by the sappers and infantrymen of the British Army, covered in mud and showing their camaraderie. We meet various characters including Jack Firebrace (Max Bowden) a sapper who digs the dangerous tunnels under the battlefields, and learns of his young son John’s death, in a letter from home. Stephen is now a lonely, cold-hearted lieutenant, who dissects dead rats. In flash backs we discover that Isabelle had left him. Firebrace saves Stephen’s life when one of the tunnels collapses in an explosion. The act ends in silhouette as the soldiers climb up the ladders out of the trenches into No Man’s Land and certain death.

Act Three in the tail end of the war, Stephen and Firebrace are again trapped underground. This time Stephen desperately tries to save Firebrace’s life, but he dies before a German Jewish soldier breaks through – it is the end of the war and peace is above ground. The play bookends back to the present day and we discover that the young man searching for the soldier’s grave has been looking for Jack Firebrace’s grave; and he is in fact John (yes named after Jack’s dead son), Stephen’s grandson.

The set by Richard Kent, works well to create multiple locations including the claustrophobic underground tunnels. The lighting tonight was maybe too dark and there was continuous smoke billowing, which worked for the factory and battle scenes but not for the gentle French countryside and house scenes.

The theatre acoustics are flat, meaning the cast are heavily miked with individual head mikes and the sound is overly loud. The microphones also pick up the fact that the maid’s shoes do not have rubbered soles, and on this stage her noisy clackety clack steps were heard throughout, especially when she exited stage left and ran round backstage to make a quick re-entrance stage right.

There was no chemistry between lovers Isabelle and Stephen, and in their graphic sex scene Stephen is naked, as any ardent lover should be. However, I was left wondering where his mike pack might be hidden.

Birdsong ends with the sounds of the soaring titular birdsong.

The play is a streamlined version of the book, but this production does not bring out the pain and inhumanity of war, or dying and surviving in a living hell, nor the horrific psychological effects of war.

THE LIGHTNING THIEF: THE PERCY JACKSON MUSICAL

The Other Palace

★★★

“Impressively staged, it is indeed truly fantastical.”

THE LIGHTNING THIEF: THE PERCY JACKSON MUSICAL

The Other Palace

Reviewed on 22nd March 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Manuel Harlan

Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE LIGHTNING THIEF

THE LIGHTNING THIEF

THE LIGHTNING THIEF

BIRDSONG

Alexandra Palace Theatre

★★

“The play is a streamlined version of the book, but this production does not bring out the pain and inhumanity of war”

BIRDSONG

Alexandra Palace Theatre

Reviewed on 28th February 2025

by Debbie Rich

Photography by Pamela Raith

Previously reviewed at this venue:

BIRDSONG

BIRDSONG

BIRDSONG

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