Back to the Future: The Musical is nothing short of miraculous. It’s not that it took more than a decade to put together or that it was the movie’s original writer, director and composer who developed it. It’s not even that having found its lead cast in 2018, the show managed to keep them all for three years while we all waited out Covid. Because with this cast, you would want to hang on to them.
No, the miracle is that it’s just so good.
I tell a lie. Bad Nat. There are two miracles. The second is that they appear to not only have cloned Michael J Fox from 1986, they’ve improved him at the same time.
Back to Back to the Future
Back to the Future: The Musical is largely Back to the Future (1986) with songs. I hope I’m not surprising anyone there? I really hope I don’t need to explain the plot to anyone either, but here’s a very short version, just in case: a teenager from 1986 accidentally gets sent back in time to the 1950s where he meet his parents; there he has to get them to fall in love and somehow find a way to get back to his own time, all without messing up his own history.
A good 80s movies
Back to the Future is a movie classic. One of the best films of all time. If you don’t agree with me, argue it out with Hadley Freeman. It just is. Naturally it has fans, who regard it as a holy work. I saw many of them there at the Adelphi this week. Some of them had Back to the Future tattoos. No, they did.
Equally naturally, therefore, some would take great offence at any real deviations from the original and Back to the Future: The Musical doesn’t try to upset them here. This is very much the same story. But there are changes. There had to be.
There are subtractions to make it easier to stage: there are no terrorists with guns and oh no, there are no cute dogs! The chase scene through the square that ends in manure? Gone. The Delorean? Now voice-controlled, so that the audience doesn’t have to try to peer at the dashboard from the other end of the auditorium.
Fighting fit
None of this is bad. In fact, the story actually works a lot better, makes it go quicker and even patches up some of the problems, as a result of these tweaks and subtractions. The manure scene is replaced by a proper stage fight in the High School, which makes the point that maybe one punch isn’t enough to stop the school bully.
There are also additions that improve it and add depth. Marty goes around town getting called ‘Calvin Klein’ – naturally, Bif and his crew want to know where he lives, but no one can find the Kleins. “Klein? What kind of name is that? Is that Jewish?”
Small town America in the 1950s.
Because the 80s weren’t that much better
But there are additions – and not just songs. Goldie Wilson’s role is expanded, as befits a character who in retrospect was a pioneer of black rights: a man who rose from being a floor cleaner to the mayor of a Californian town. The 1980s are now further away from us than the 1950s were at the time the movie was made, so is similarly treated to the 1950s, with aerobic dance routines, breakdancing and more.
Some of these additions are knowing. Act 2 starts with a dream sequence in which Doc Brown imagines the future. “There was no war, no crime, no disease.” LOOKS TO AUDIENCE. MASSIVE ROUND OF APPLAUSE.
So while you know what you’re going to get before you get there, right down to the inevitable final rendition of The Power of Love, there are enough changes that you won’t ever feel like you could join in and start a read-along with the cast.
All the same, if that were the extent of Back to the Future: The Musical‘s appeal, you could easily stay at home and watch the movie in the format of your choice. That’s not why you should go.
You should go for the unbelievable production values, staging and cast. They’re just so good.
The cast are all superb, but there are some that stand out all the same.
Pitch perfect
I can’t praise Olly Dobson enough. He looks like Michael J Fox. He sounds like Michael J Fox. But better still, he can sing and dance much better than Michael J Fox, who of course didn’t sing in the movie at all. I don’t want to offend MJF fans of any sort, since without his performance, Dobson wouldn’t have anything to copy in his performance. But you absolutely could close your eyes and think it was MJF all the way through. If Dobson doesn’t get awards and go on to huge things after this, I’ll be horrified.
Hugh Coles reprising Crispin Glover’s role looks nothing much like him, but often sounds like him and is just as comedic. It’s also fascinating to watch someone who is clearly a very good dancer pretending to be a very bad dancer.
Lastly, we have Roger Bart as Doc Brown. It’s a different performance from Christopher Lloyd, being much more theatrical. Bart is a clear showman who knows how to work an audience, particularly one who practically give him a standing ovation on his first entrance – and literally does at the final curtain. You’ll always be reminded of Lloyd when you watch him, but this feels like a different Doc Brown all the same.
Working with Bart to give him the most opportunities for comedy is the script, which makes Brown aware that he’s in a musical. When the chorus turn up and start singing and dancing, Bart stops the action to stare at them, even ushering the strangers out of his house at one point, aghast at the home invasion. Marty asks Brown at one point: “Who are all these girls?” “I don’t know: they just show up as soon as I start singing” is the reply.
Again, wonderful performances may be a draw for any true theatre-goer – she wrote, pretentiously – but that’s not always sufficient for the casual audience member. So I’m going to recommend Back to the Future: The Musical for all those reasons but also for its sheer spectacle. So much money has been spent on this, it’s astonishing.
The future of theatre?
The Delorean moves. It disappears in a flash of fire. It even flies. It flew over me in Row B! Bubbles rain down on the audience during dances. The sets are beautiful and the scene changes are not only astonishing, they sometimes seem magical. It’s all sleight of hand, but Marty and the Doc can somehow transport themselves from the front of the stage and to the back in mere instances.
While the terrorists and the chases are gone, the play still manages to give you as close a recreation of going up to 88mph in a car as you could ever do on stage. Doc Brown scales clock towers (comedically). Every scene has had money spent on it to make it as much like a movie as possible. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an expensive production in my life. I suspect the producers’ experience with the Back to the Future ride have been put to work here, because it reminded me a lot of the IMAX 3D rides you get in Las Vegas.
So, please go. It’s just a delight, whether you love theatre, movies, Back to the Future, musicals or all of the above. I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun in the theatre before. Catch it while you still can!
Rating
(If I could give it 88 stars, I would)
Details
Where: Adelphi Theatre, 409-412 Strand, London WC2R 0NS
When: Booking until 13 February 2022
How long: 2h50 including interval
Tickets
Tickets from: the Back to the Future website
How much? From £19.55
What do you get for £224.50? A stalls seat and…
I loved it. But not that much.
Some photos: © Sean Ebsworth Barnes