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EXCLUSIVE: Barbara Broccoli, with her theater hat on, is transferring the Sing Street musical to London. The play is based on John Carney’s charming 2016 coming-of-age movie about a group of skint school kids in 1982 Dublin who form a rock band to help them find love and forget their troubles to London next summer.
The show, from the team behind Once, is another musical adapted from a film created by Carney.
Once, with James Bond producer Broccoli as lead producer, went on to win eight trophies at the 66th Tony Awards, including Best Musical and a Best Book win for playwright and screenwriter Enda Walsh who performs the same writing duties on Sing Street.
Walsh confirmed that the Sing Street musical will preview at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, West London from July 8 for a short run until July 23.
The show is billed as A Lyric Hammersmith Theatre Theatre Production but it’s being led by Broccoli, as was Sing Street’s first iteration at Off Broadway’s New York Theatre Workshop in December, 2019.
If Sing Street soars in Hammersmith, then it can surely have further life in the West End, and beyond.
Walsh refers to Broccoli as “the Boss.” He admires her because she’s this big Hollywood executive of Bond movies and “she loves theater shows as well,” he tells me.
Walsh says that Broccoli “is steering the whole thing, she steered the show from the beginning,” and “she’s the one who originally approached me to do it after we had so much fun on Once.”
After the initial season on the Lower East Side, the intention had been for director Rebecca Taichman (Indecent) and creatives to rework Sing Street because, as Walsh puts it, it required “overhauling” before heading to Broadway.
Broadway plans were scuppered due to the pandemic but Walsh wonders whether this was a blessing in disguise. “Shows get gobbled up very, very quickly if they’re not right,” he says.
Taichman reassembled her team at The Huntington in Boston in 2022 and remounted the show with choreographer Sonya Tayeh, and “suddenly it sort of had life,” Walsh exclaims.
Walsh’s book was tighter, Crowley’s sets were brighter and less gloomy, Luke Hall’s video designs popped and Depeche Mode’s musical director Peter Gordeno came on as musical supervisor. “Everything changed,” Walsh marvels. The feeling in Boston, he adds, was “here we go, this feels really right.”
What the show had needed, Walsh argues, “was joy.”
He explains: “I mean real and also sort of visual joy.”
Times are hard for main character, the 16-year-old Conor in recession-strapped Dublin. His parents are fighting, his father is suffering from financial woes which force Conor to switch from a private school where he thrived to an intolerant one where he’s bullied.
So the sets and the music had to be “really joyful” as a counterpoint to Conor’s misery, although his life brightens when he spots the mysterious Raphina at his new Catholic school. Conor flails about to form a band in order to impress her and win her heart.
Walsh’s job, however, “was to keep the story grounded in the concrete of Dublin.”
He says the next step for the creative team is figuring out “what we’re going to present” at the Lyric Theatre in July. And then they have to find the right kids who can sing, play music and act.
The benchmark is pretty high. Brenock O’Connor, the original Conor at the New York Theatre Workshop, won rave reviews from critics for his performance. I was impressed too.
O’Connor’s currently portraying Rolling Stone Keith Richards at Chichester Festival Theatre in Charlotte Jones’s new play Redlands, based on the famous 1967 Stones drug bust.
Walsh also has a new stage work, a song cycle called Safe House, which has its official opening night at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre today. He directs the piece and he’s also written lyrics for Anna Mullarkey’s score. Safe House will also visit New York.
Along with Once and Sing Street, Walsh also collaborated with David Bowie on the musical Lazarus, as well as Grief is the Thing with Feathers with Cillian Murphy and theatre company Complicité.
Murphy also stars in Walsh’s screen adaptation of Claire Keegan’s novel Small Things Like These directed by Tim Mielants. There’s also a studio movie, which he’s forbidden to discuss.
But, most intriguingly, Walsh has written a new film called Ish, shot back in the summer by visual artist Imran Perretta, a recipient of a 2020 Turner Prize Bursary.
“I’m really excited about working with Imran, who’s this Bangladeshi-Italian, born in South London, artist, and it’s his first feature,” Walsh explains.
The film’s set in Luton, Bedfordshire, and it’s about the friendship of two 13 -year-old boys. One is Bangladeshi, the other is from a Palestinian background. “I think it’s going to melt hearts,” Walsh predicts.
