Disney’s Hercules in the West End review – bursting with energy but lacking in heart

Ever since The Lion King opened 28 years ago, Disney has had remarkable success in transforming its chart-topping animated movies into stage musicals. Hercules, the latest arrival, has all the qualities associated with the brand: it’s slick, it’s colourful, it’s energetic.

It’s a show where it’s perfectly possible to have a good time. Yet something is missing. The wit and warmth that made the 1997 classic rather endearing have been replaced by something much more mechanical and heavy-handed. As we follow Hercules on his quest for god-like status, the entire endeavour feels lacking in heart.

The book by Robert Horn (of Shucked fame) and distinguished theatre director Kwame Kwei-Armah is strangely dissonant. It solves some plot problems, muffs others, and varies in tone from the relatively sophisticated – “Dating is just wondering why someone is single and then finding out” – to the worthy – “A town without tolerance is not a town worth saving” – to the low – “In that outfit, I can see you’re nuts” – to the simply odd – “He’s so strong he could be a single mother.”

The songs by Alan Menken and David Zippel supplement those in the film, but don’t ever produce a tune to touch “Zero to Hero” or “Go the Distance”, which were both in the original.

It’s a show that is clearly, on some levels, intended for children, so the sets by Dane Laffrey (who just won a Tony for Maybe Happy Ending) resemble something out of The Flintstones, with fake rocks, big pillars, and a bar called the Medusa. They are enhanced rather prettily by video designs (by George Reeve) that whisk Hercules and the musical from one place to the other, without ever breaking any new ground. The puppets (originally by James Ortiz with contributions from Laffrey) are equally unsophisticated: great lumbering Cyclops and T-Rex, plus a machine for the final battle where Hades suddenly has giant hands that lollop about the stage.

Hades himself (Stephen Carlile, doing his best) has been turned into a snarling pantomime villain, with strong echoes of Scar (who Carlile previously played on Broadway). Luke Brady’s Hercules smiles at every opportunity and has a nice line in cheek, while Mae Ann Jorolan’s sweet-voiced Meg enlivens each scene in which she appears. Trevor Dion Nicholas (an excellent genie in Aladdin in his previous Disney incarnation) isn’t really given enough to do as the trainer Phil, charged with turning Hercules into a superstar.

Best of all are the five Muses – Malinda Parris, Candace Furbert, Robyn Rose-Li, Sharlene Hector and Brianna Ogunbawo – who combine magnificent gospel-riffed singing with plenty of humour and knowing sass. They appear in an ever-changing wardrobe of outrageous, shiny costumes (by Gregg Barnes and Sky Switser), head-dresses glistening, bringing their own rising pillars along with them for added effect. The scene in the rose garden in which they eavesdrop on the courtship of Meg and Hercules, resplendent in pink wigs, skittering on high heels, their voices full of breath and wonder, has a sweetness that is missing elsewhere.

Director and choreographer Casey Nicholaw (with co-choreographer Tanisha Scott) keeps things moving along at a rapid lick; sometimes it might be nice to let the action pause for breath and tone down the volume of the excellent band under music director Daniel Whitby just a bit. But the plan seems to be to get through everything as quickly as possible.

Hercules is antiseptic fun, carefully manufactured. It isn’t a bad night out, but it’s like a fizzy drink, lively on the tongue but ultimately unsatisfying.