Morgan Gregory Archives - thespyinthestalls.com

★★★

“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.

Back to the Future

Adelphi Theatre

Reviewed – 6th October 2021

★★★★

“It is sleek, well-oiled and will surely be burning bright for quite some time”

Even with the help of a 1.21 gigawatts flux capacitor and an unhealthy dose of radioactive plutonium, 88 mph seems a pretty modest speed required to propel a rear-engine ‘DeLorean’ through time. But this piece of eighties iconography has no trouble landing on the stage of the Adelphi Theatre in the twenty-first century, swept along by the sheer force of a gravity-defying publicity machine and the collective, kick-starting power of a couple of thousand fans a night, adding to the lightning bolts of energy that burst throughout the auditorium. To say “Back to the Future: The Musical” is spectacular is an understatement. It showers us with special effects, jaw-dropping sets and transitions, blurs of neon, CGI magic and a hi-wattage, fifties/eighties mash up of a soundtrack. It is sleek, well-oiled and will surely be burning bright for quite some time.

But listen closely and you hear some troublesome knocking in the engine. Not enough to stall it and too quiet to worry the crowd, the flaws are invariably swamped by the energy of the performances. It’s a bizarre adaptation of the film; simultaneously faithful to the original but adding quirks and eccentricities that don’t always sit comfortably with the source material. Doc Brown attracts an ensemble of backing singers and dancers like flies. It’s a lot of fun, is wonderfully appealing to the ears and eyes and it breaks the fourth wall. But you wonder why. The music and lyrics of Alan Silvestri and Glan Ballard are crowd pleasing pastiches, with words and rhymes full of witty observation and humour; but sometimes side-stepping into banality. The almost relentless breaking into song takes away from the narrative and the characterisation; we barely have time to take a breath (so how do the cast cope?) and we miss those moments when we can absorb the concepts of space, time and history that the film allowed us to contemplate.

Yet despite being stripped of at least one dimension of their characters, the cast give impeccable performances. Olly Dobson, as Marty McFly, is a dead ringer for Michael J. Fox and is a fireball of energy. When he arrives back in 1955, the moments when his teenage mother (Rosanna Hyland) has ‘the hots’ for him are played for real laughs. (It is bizarre to note that when the film was originally pitched to Disney, the appalled executives rejected it outright, declaring it to be a movie about incest). More emphasis is placed on Marty’s relationship with his dad, George. Hugh Coles gives one of the stand-out performances; lanky and geeky with angular awkwardness, and often hilarious in the way only a highly skilled mover can re-enact ‘bad dancing’. Roger Bart’s Doc Brown is a contagious concoction of quirks, marred only by his over playing to the audience at times.

The special effects, sets and lighting are as much a lead role as the protagonists. Tim Lutkin’s lighting, Finn Ross’ video design, coupled with Chris Fisher’s illusion design, Gareth Owen’s sound and The Twins FX animatronics cannot fail to produce a breath-taking show. Add on the extra layers of Chris Bailey’s sleek, though sometimes excessive, choreography; and musical director Jim Henson’s thirteen-piece band and you have a display that defies the laws of physics. Like the well-worn bumblebee flight myth (it is a scientific and aerodynamic impossibility that bumblebees can fly – yet fly they do) the unconventional components that make up this vehicle should leave it grounded. It shouldn’t do – but it flies. It soars even. Although not timeless, it will stand the test of time and we’ll still be seeing this show in the West End way back to the future.

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

Adelphi Theatre

Reviewed – 6th October 2021

★★★★

“It is sleek, well-oiled and will surely be burning bright for quite some time”

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Sean Ebsworth Barnes

Back to the Future

Adelphi Theatre until July 2022

Shows we reviewed in September 2021: