Musicals – the gateway drug of the theatre world

Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World and Standing at the Sky’s Edge are two extremely different shows. The first is an upbeat, pop-tastic piece of feminist family entertainment, the second a poignant exploration of postwar Britain told through the fortunes of an iconic housing estate. You might think, therefore, that their target audiences are polar opposites too, and yet they share a common desire to appeal to first-time theatre goers.

With Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World, this might seem more obvious. Our audiences primarily consist of children and their wranglers, and it stands to reason that a fair proportion of our audience might be entering a theatre for their first time. For me, this puts a heap of additional pressure on us to deliver something truly excellent – get things right, and we could spark a lifelong love of the medium. Deliver something dull and they might never want to come back. Far from being an easy crowd, children are some of the most discerning audiences out there, and are more likely to let you know if they’re not engaged.

Sky’s Edge is by no means a children’s show, but garnered a lot of first-time customers too. These were primarily (at least in Sheffield) Richard Hawley fans who didn’t necessarily trust the theatre but knew they loved his music, and in a lot of cases I believe went home converted. Perhaps after panto, I’d wager musicals are most people’s introduction to live theatre. This might be because they’re more likely to be based on existing work, and therefore come with a degree of familiarity (which isn’t in itself a bad thing), or because it’s much easier to listen to a song online and get a sense of a show than it is to research a play. Whatever the reason, this is a huge boon to musical theatre writers, and a responsibility we must take seriously.

Making work for a theatre novice isn’t really different to making work for anyone else. Your story still needs to be engaging, your characters must feel real and relatable, the experience you’re creating needs to warrant leaving the house for – it must be thrilling and live and unable to be fully captured within the pages of a book or a cast recording. Musicals are ideal for first time audiences because they can offer intimacy and spectacle, big emotions, epic sweep, that special sense of shared communion which is theatre at its finest. There should never be any entry test to enjoying art, and the best musicals know this. A great musical grips its audience from the first bars to the final note, and what better way to ignite a lifetime’s passion?

Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World has kickstarted a new tour, with Standing at the Sky’s Edge moving into the West End early next year.