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THE LIGHTNING THIEF: THE PERCY JACKSON MUSICAL

★★★

The Other Palace

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THE LIGHTNING THIEF: THE PERCY JACKSON MUSICAL

The Other Palace

★★★

“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.



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:

HOMO ALONE | ★★★ | December 2024
JULIE: THE MUSICAL | ★★½ | June 2024
CRUEL INTENTIONS: THE 90s MUSICAL | ★★★★ | January 2024
A VERY VERY BAD CINDERELLA | ★★★★ | December 2023
TROMPE L’OEIL | ★★★ | September 2023
DOM – THE PLAY | ★★★★ | February 2023
GHOSTED – ANOTHER F**KING CHRISTMAS CAROL | ★★★★★ | December 2022
GLORY RIDE | ★★★ | November 2022
MILLENNIALS | ★★★ | July 2022

 

THE LIGHTNING THIEF

THE LIGHTNING THIEF

THE LIGHTNING THIEF

Grease

Grease

★★★★

Dominion Theatre

Reviews, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Grease

Dominion Theatre

Reviewed – 17th May 2022

★★★★

 

“if the onstage passion isn’t quite ‘electrifying’, the overall presentation is.”

 

Picture the scene in a cold, forbidding producers’ office. You’re pitching a musical. “What’s the plot?” they ask. Well; it’s boy meets girl, boy and girl indulge in a bit of ‘summer loving’ on holiday, boy spurns girl in the face of peer pressure back at school. Girl sees him for the shallow guy he is, so loses interest anyway. For some inexplicable reason she then decides that she wants him after all (teenagers, eh?). So, she changes her image, trashes what’s left of her endearing and intelligent personality, and dresses provocatively to entice this somewhat dumb and superficial guy. And – Hey Presto! They go together like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong.

If you haven’t already been shown the door, you might just get to throw in that you think a two-thousand-seater West End theatre is the perfect venue. Preposterous. So maybe you should start the pitch with the title. When “Grease” was released for the cinema in 1978 it became the highest grossing musical film ever at the time. “Grease” was, and still is, the word, as the title song informs us. The New York Times called it “terrific fun”. Four and a half decades later that description still applies.

The current revival at London’s Dominion Theatre harks back more to the original musical which preceded the John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John blockbuster, and which ran on Broadway for eight years until 1980. It’s London debut starred Richard Gere. But the familiarity is still there, and everything we simultaneously love and lambast is bursting at the seams in Nikolai Foster’s sumptuous production. There is a glorious mix of silliness and surreality, bubble-gum and bravado. No matter that the storyline is imperceptible to the point that the opening bars heralding each song are a welcome respite from the banality of the dialogue.

It is within the musical numbers that the heart of the show beats fiercely. There are a couple of additions to the set list, and a couple restored from the original, though these feel inconsequential when up against the wealth of crowd pleasers. Foster bravely doesn’t always play to the crowd, however, but instead injects a freshness that puts a new slant on some of Jim Jacobs’ and Warren Casey’s compositions. Highlights include Jocasta Almgill’s biting rendition of “There Are Worse Things I Could Do” or Olivia Moore’s poignant ”Hopelessly Devoted to You” during which she decides she no longer belongs on the side-lines.

Moore’s Sandy does flirt with feistiness, but the character cannot escape the constraints of the script. Even in the seventies one must have wondered why she submits to such gender stereotypical peer pressure; and the question certainly looms larger today. In fact, there are so many wrong messages bouncing off the walls of the auditorium. For the most part they are drowned out by the infectious rhythms of the music and the gusto of the performances, driven by the sheer power of Arlene Phillips’ choreography.

There is little to be gained from looking for nuance or, indeed, emotional punch. We don’t feel the ‘multiplying chills’ about which Dan Partridge, as Danny Zuko, faultlessly sings. But if the onstage passion isn’t quite ‘electrifying’, the overall presentation is. As the closing number suggests: “that’s the way it should be”. Or rather “shoo-bop sha wadda wadda yippity boom de boom”.

 

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Manuel Harlan


Grease

Dominion Theatre until 29th October

 

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