Review: Hercules, Theatre Royal Drury Lane

The year is 1997. The animated film Hercules rakes in $252.7 million worldwide and confirms many a budding homosexual. Now, 27 years later, Disney blows the budget of a small local council reimagining it for new audiences.

For the unfamiliar, a quick recap: it’s loosely based on the Hellenic myth but changing the baddie from Zeus’s understandably vindictive wife, Hera, to the unfairly demonised Hades. Herc is born to the blissful divine power couple but made half-human by Hades, therefore launching him on a quest to prove his worth and claim his rightful place in the pantheon. After many trials, he realises that love is more important than glory through a spirited but ultimately damsel-dame Meg.

Like many Disney “musicals”, it only has about five (admittedly cracking) songs and is not drawn but in the flesh. Tricky. The Lion King was staged with some leaps of puppetry and imagination. Hercules has taken a more tried-and-tested route, like Frozen, which was in the same theatre last year.

The small army of creatives has constructed literal swinging columns that divide the action like eight gliding three-storey houses. Mosaic video work by George Reeve means that the eye is never left to wander. Gregg Barnes and Sky Switser’s costumes are flashy but incongruous and a little lazy. Sneakers and sweats give a Disney Park feel throughout.

The film is an Americanisation of the spite-filled original tale, and the musical seems to take this a step further. Phil the amorous satyr has morphed into just a waiter/ex-coach (no horn), and Pain and Panic are again reduced to hell’s middle management. Some of the charm is certainly lost. Original and legendary creatives Alan Menken (music) and David Zippel (lyrics) return with new songs, but churn out painfully descriptive bridges between the toe-tappers we are all awaiting.

It all sounds pretty pessimistic, but hold onto your amphora. The muses, Malinda Parris, Candace Furbert, Brianna Ogunbawo, Robyn Rose-Li, and Sharlene Hector, are every inch the match for their film counterparts and thankfully given even more stage time: soulful, censorious with a flare of Gospel, they fill the role of the traditional Greek chorus and then some, and are stunning in hits such as ‘Zero To Hero’ and ‘Gospel Truth’. They even give life to some of the less imaginative new numbers. Quick-changing to cheerleaders and Amazons (see Grace Jones), they rise from trap doors and soar on plinths. So show-stealing are they that the minute we see one, we know we are secure in diamond-braceleted hands. Yet when the poor dance ensemble swings around, despite Casey Nicholaw’s perky choreography, we settle back in our seats.

The good is unevenly distributed but still present. Stephen Carlile as Hades gives a mix of Donald Trump and Marilyn Manson: blue eyes, pointed fingers – a knowingly queer-coded villain. Thankfully, throughout the self-awareness is high. Meg (Mae Ann Jorolan) also has a dynamite voice/presence and does well to inhabit a leading female stereotype that thankfully died in the 2010s: the slinky, thin, semi-feminist ‘pick-me-girl’ that yields to a man’s kiss at 1 hour 10 of the film. Luke Brady’s HUNKcules sadly leads with the arm, not the throat muscles. Nicholaw’s directing mirrors his choreography style – relentless with flecks of golden gluttony, keeping you entertained throughout. Yet everything is a little more cruise ship than West End.

Sitting within the Regency mock-Greco grandeur of the Theatre Royal, the sweatpants and plastic props just skew implausibly cheap. But as for many Disney adults of my generation, that isn’t necessarily a deal breaker. This is a safe, not a surprising interpretation. Go for the 5-star muses and persist through the rest, as the power of nostalgia is still as potent as ever!

Written by Robert Horn & Kwame Kwei-Armah
Directed & Choreographed by Casey Nicholaw
Video Design by George Reeve
Costume by Gregg Barnes & Sky Switser
Music by Alan Menken
Lyrics by David Zippel
Produced by Disney & Anne Quart

Hercules plays at Theatre Royal Drury Lane until March 2026.