A great modern musical can engage the mind even as it captures our hearts and stirs our emotions. RENT, the much loved musical from the AIDS crisis is a very good example and HAMILTON has entertained as well as teaching a generation of young Broadway and West End theatre goers about America’s founding fathers.
An intriguing American musical has been been announced for the Soho Theatre and sounds like it could be similarly gripping. THE VIEW UPSTAIRS runs from 18 July to 24 August and here’s what we know so far.
The show's score was composed by Max Vernon in 2013 and got its first production, Off-Broadway in February 2017 at the Lynn Redgrave Theater in New York, however, previous to this it found a particular resonance as a benefit concert on 11 July 2016 for the victims and survivors of the Orlando nightclub shooting.
The plot is described as following the adventures of Wes “a young fashion designer who buys an abandoned space that was formerly a '70s gay bar, burned down in an arson attack that killed 32 people decades earlier”.
An on-line search reveals that the show is “based on the real-life events of the 1973 arson attack at the UpStairs Lounge, a gay bar in New Orleans. This attack, now accepted as a targeted anti-gay attack (despite the court officially listing the fire as coming from as "undetermined origin"), resulted in the deaths of 32 people, the deadliest attack[1] on a gay club in U.S. history before the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting. The show is inspired by and pays tributes to many of the patrons that frequented the venue”.
It sounds like a very poignant evening and the cast is very promising too. Broadway star Andy Mientus (Les Misérables) will make his UK theatre debut in the production, alongside John Partridge (EastEnders), Declan Bennett (Jesus Christ Superstar), Victoria Hamilton-Barritt (The Wild Party), Cedric Neal (Chess), Carly Mercedes Dyer (Hadestown), Gary Lee (Flashdance), Joseph Prouse (Hadestown) and Derek Hagen (The Twilight Zone). The casting for central character Wes is to be announced.
The musical will be directed in London by Jonathan O'Boyle with choreography by Fabian Aloise, set and costume design by Lee Newby, lighting by Nic Farman, sound by Adam Fisher and casting by Will Burton.
The announcement that BIG, the musical, will play a limited season at the Dominion Theatre is great news for fans of the classic 1980s family film but also for producer Michael Rose who originated the UK version.