The Revitalized Musical? I Don’t Think So!

The West End may currently be running with 25 “musicals” but “the idea of a revitalisation of the form is very much overplayed. Six are blockbuster films reworked in the hope that they will already have a receptive audience, five are jukebox musicals using the well-worn hits of popular artists such as Abba or Buddy Holly, five are revivals of old favourites such as The Sound of Music, one is a catalogue show of the works of the composer-lyricist William Finn, another an African take on Mozart, which leaves seven original works, some of which have been running for close on 20 years, such as Phantom of the Opera or Blood Brothers.”