The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind musical at the RSC and in the West End – review

Stratford heads to Malawi in this brand new musical – the first under the auspices of the RSC’s co-artistic directors Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey.

The fact that the story all actually happened – true but not necessarily real, as the show itself puts it – makes The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind even more uplifting and emotional. And that’s before its real-life protagonist William Kamkwamba steps out from the audience to take a bow at the curtain call on press night, reducing the place to a blubbering wreck.

To be fair, writer Richy Hughes and his composer colleague Tim Sutton have made it clear from the start that they know exactly how to do that all on their own, with rousing tunes and shimmering descants precisely timed for maximum effect. Harmonies sweep from gentle ballads to soaring choruses with ease, while Hughes’s lyrics are witty and effective without ever stooping to sentimentality.

The narrative itself is surprisingly simple and, on the face of it, small. Chiwetel Ejiofor (also in the press night audience) made a film of it in 2019. It tells the story of 13-year-old William, whose self-taught curiosity about science leads him to build a wind turbine in his village – alternately lashed by monsoons and desiccated with drought – thus generating power to run water pumps and saving them from deadly famine.

But the simplicity is actually its superpower, allowing for some clear storytelling with tangential subplots about William’s sister escaping the village, his stray dog companion and his struggling father, who wants to believe in his son’s vision but finds himself strangled by the business of keeping his family alive.

Alistair Nwachukwu plays the teenager with vigour and intelligence, but it’s Sifiso Mazibuko and Madeline Appiah as his parents who exercise the greatest emotional pull, singing impressively and building the heart of both their family and the show.

Destined for a West End run later this year, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is much too big a production for the Swan Theatre and suffers somewhat because of it. Lynette Linton’s direction and Shelley Maxwell’s choreography for the giant cast are clearly intended for a bigger stage, and too often the action gets forced into too tight a space or shuffled around to make way for another dance. But Frankie Bradshaw’s designs feel authentic, the heat of the Malawian sun never far from the horizon, and the colours, vibrancy and sheer exuberance of everyone on stage are infectious.

Given the room to breathe and release its energy fully, this could be a show that has the power to run and run for the RSC – if you’ll forgive the electrical generation pun.