King of Pangea at King’s Head Theatre – review

According to geologists, Pangea was a supercontinent that existed around 200 to 300 million years ago, prior to breaking up into North America, South America, Europe and Africa. However, in Martin Storrow’s musical King of Pangea, it refers to an imaginary land devised by the protagonist Sam’s mother and serves as a link between her and her son that transcends her untimely death.

The show was originally developed in Los Angeles in 2019; it received its first fully staged production in Oklahoma City last year, and this UK premiere is co-produced by Tony-winning Broadway director-choreographer Jerry Mitchell. Storrow has written music, lyrics and book, and the story is autobiographical to boot. Life, death, grief and hope are weighty themes to pack into a 90-minute piece – fortunately, it’s brought to life by Richard Israel’s upbeat production and a highly likeable cast of six.

Sam Crowe (played as a young boy by Tayt Joshua Silvester-Stoller, who shares the role with Daniel Lee) is the adored only child of doting parents Celia (Sophia Ragavelas) and Arthur (Dan Burton), but his early life is interrupted when Celia is diagnosed with cancer. It goes into remission but later returns and proves to be incurable when Sam (played as a young adult by Alfie Blackwell) is in his final term of university (this all takes place in the opening scenes). In the aftermath, he breaks up with his girlfriend Amy (Emily Tang) and attempts to channel his grief through fastidious cleaning.

Blackwell, due to shortly graduate from ArtsEd, gives an expressive professional debut as the emotionally adrift Sam. Ragavelas’s poetry-writing, colour purple-loving Celia and Burton’s Arthur (doubling as a rich-toned sea Captain) both embody devoted parental love and sing beautifully.

The folk-musical theatre score, performed by a four-piece band led by Jordan Paul Clarke, features some appealing ballads, though the most memorable numbers are the character songs performed by eccentric socks-with-sandals-wearing prophet Elijah (Mark Curry). The jaunty “All My Friends”, a comic ode to how he has outlived everyone he loves, provides some much-needed irreverence, and later he and Sam share the master-and-apprentice quasi-rap number “The Curriculum”. There are some dud lyrics (such as rhyming “fleeting” and “meaning”) and the plot strands aren’t all fully realised – it isn’t clear why Sam can’t use his enchanted coins to travel directly to Pangea.

Carly Brownbridge’s neat design features sandstone bleachers streaked with turquoise, with drawers opening up to store props and furniture. In Pangea, everyone is dressed like someone out of Arabian Nights or Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The show is anchored by a secular motif of hope and imagination rather than any specific religious faith. The fact that the Crowes are Jewish is underexplored, apart from a brief reference to bar mitzvah money and Sam and Arthur donning kippahs for Celia’s stone setting ceremony a year on.

The whimsy won’t be for everyone and the abundance of poetic platitudes can be a little hard to swallow. However, there are worse things than an excess of sentimentality when it clearly comes from the heart rather than an attempt to manipulate.