Disney’s Hercules musical goes from zero to hero on the West End – UK Times

For months now, the phrase “Muse Flash” has been appearing around London. With every sighting of these words and the accompanying cartoon lightning bolt, I’m reminded just how much money is being pumped into ensuring the success of the new musical adaptation of Disney’s Hercules. It appears to be working: previews sold out months in advance and an extended run until March 2026 has already been announced. Commercial victory is all but guaranteed. But a hit to the tune of The Lion King or the recently closed Frozen? Well, that remains to be seen.

When fans talk about how the Greek myth of demigod Heracles became their favourite Disney film, the same things are always mentioned. Firstly, there is the emotional story of a son seeking to earn a place in his family. Then there are the energetic songs composed by Disney royalty Alan Menken (the R&B doo-wop of “I Won’t Say I’m in Love”, say, or the gospel-inflected “Zero to Hero”). And finally, the sheer vibe of the 1997 film: its vivid colours, offbeat comedic style, and modern approach to ancient mythology. In James Woods’s fire-spewing hands, lord of the underworld Hades is a camp icon: a wise-cracking, eye-rolling force of evil. Danny DeVito, meanwhile, imbued Philoctetes, the reluctant mentor of Hercules, with old-man sarcasm. Anachronistic titbits are charmingly woven through the script to great comic effect, from the Nike-inspired range of “Air-Herc” shoes to the moment someone calls “IX-I-I!” for help.

While the film wasn’t the immediate box office smash Disney had hoped, Hercules has in the years since earned something of a cult following. The musical, which began life as a workshop in Central Park in 2019 and was previously performed in German in Hamburg, therefore has a lot to live up to. It’s tech rehearsal week when I go backstage at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane to speak to the team, and I’m met with a tableau of organised chaos. Everyone is exhausted – none more so, naturally, than Hercules himself, British musical theatre star Luke Brady.

Hercules was an integral character to get right, particularly given the inherent challenges for casting. In the cartoon, the character first appears as a gangly teenager before bulking up mid-power ballad – evolving into “Hunk-eles” as the Muses call him. American director and choreographer Casey Nicholaw, who has been at the helm of the production since its inception, was not keen on either using technical trickery or swapping out the Hercules actor to mimic the physical transformation, meaning they needed their perfect hero from the jump. They found it in Brady, who previously starred in another cartoon-to-stage production as Moses in the London production of DreamWorks’ Prince of Egypt.

“He walked in the room and no joke, we all just grabbed each other,” Nicholaw recalls, giddily. With his good looks and warm presence, Brady certainly seems a good fit for the teen demigod; teaser clips of the actor belting from the soundtrack prove he’s got the pipes for the part, too.

The show opens some four years after Brady first heard whispers that Hercules was coming to the West End. Did it cross his mind at the time that he might be the one to play Zeus’s son? “I mean, it was in the repertoire, ‘Go the Distance’ was for sure,” he says, referring to the Oscar-nominated track popularised by Michael Bolton’s soaring pop cover. “[It’s] been in the subconscious somewhere for a few years. And I guess now, here we are.”

The role, unsurprisingly, is demanding even by musical theatre standards. “There’s no amount of training outside of this building that can prepare me for what I’m doing on the stage,” Brady says. His American co-star Trevor Dion Nicholas, who plays Philoctetes, nods: “You’re running a marathon!”

A new stage production provides a chance to flesh out the world of Hercules beyond its eponymous hero. The women, in particular, are more shaded in and three-dimensional. Take Meg, played by Mae Ann Jordan. A droll proto-femcel who has sworn off men after one confined her to the underworld (fair enough), Meg in the film refuses to fall for Hercules and his “rippling pectorals” – until she does.

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For Nicholaw, making their interactions feel real meant “beefing up” their relationship with a new Menken-penned love song and additional scenes. The Muses (Candace Furbert, Sharlene Hector, Brianna Ogunbawo, Malinda Paris, Robyn Rose-Li), too, have been given an expanded role, with their gospel and Motown sound (“A Star is Born” and “The Gospel Truth”) now woven throughout the soundtrack. “We really flesh them out,” Nicholaw tells me. “Wait until you see it. If you’re a fan of the movie, you’re gonna die!”

Hercules is by no means the first Disney film to be given the West End treatment. Little has come close to the juggernaut success of The Lion King, which remains one of London’s best-selling productions 25 years after it first opened. But there have been other hits, the most recent being Aladdin (which Nicholaw also directed) and Frozen. Although they received middling reviews from critics, both were still perfectly commercial successes by West End standards.

Like those two productions, Hercules is extending the story beyond its source material with a new book written by Robert Horn and Young Vic artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah. One might expect a mega-corporation like Disney to have a white-knuckle grip on its IP, but costume co-designer Gregg Barnes says the company views the theatrical division as a different beast. Unlike its attitudes to theme parks and ice shows and other live entertainment, Disney is surprisingly willing to let the creatives take control, he says. “They’re not afraid to fly in the face of the tradition of animation – but you have to know why you’re doing it.”

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In a statement sure to panic Disney purists, Nicholaw tells me his production is not at all “precious” with the film. “You want to deliver on the things that are iconic to people, and you also want to capture the spirit of it. But you don’t want to be so tied to it,” he says. Fan favourite characters, for example, have been reimagined and renamed; some appear as puppets rather than people.

Underpinning the whole show is that tricky balance between familiar and fresh. The original film has a visual language that is instantly recognisable as Hercules, in which heads and bodies mimic the undulating shape of terracotta vases, and spirals etched in Greek illustrations embellish everything from set pieces to characters’ nipples. Set designer Dane Laffrey hails the original cartoonist as a “genius” and “visionary” – but while his style is nodded to in the clouds of the backdrop, any “attempts to actually capture that in total, would have been a trap”.

For costume, Nicholaw told American designers Barnes and Sky Switser that he envisioned the town of Thebes – very much the human site of the show – as your “dream Grecian vacation”. Dolce and Gabbana’s decadent 2019 collection, inspired by Ancient Greece and debuting on the catwalk at Sicily’s historic Valley of the Temples, proved a strong style influence, with the chorus decked out in draped, toga-esque gowns and high-top trainers flecked in gold.

To anyone who saw the Hamburg Hercules, the West End production might appear very similar. Yet behind the scenes, it’s “basically a brand new show”, says stage manager Chris Hesketh – and certainly a more complex one. At nearly 2,000-seat capacity, Theatre Royal Drury Lane is one of the West End’s biggest theatres. From the expansive audience to the mighty pillars on stage, it’s the sheer scale that hits you first. It’s surprising, then, to learn that in terms of actual stage space, this West End version is actually the smallest production of Hercules so far. Laffrey has been involved in the show at every level and insists that “scaling down” has only benefited the production. “It condenses it and energises it differently,” he says. Make no mistake, though – it may not be the size of a small Grecian village, but Hercules is still flipping huge, even to those used to Disney budgets.

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Hesketh and deputy stage manager Sally Inch are both returners to Mickey’s musical world, having previously worked on Frozen (an adaptation of the 2013 film) when it, too, ran at the Theatre Royal. That was a “behemoth of a musical”, Hesketh admits. So, to hear Inch describe Hercules as “Frozen 10 times” when it comes to its technicality is certainly saying something. “The set, the special effects; each scene change has to be coordinated within a millisecond of timing to make it work. It’s literally herculean.”

At every stage, you can feel the lengths everyone is going to ensure Hercules is a hit. Yet for all the advertising, the cast and team are strangely coy about what we’re actually going to be treated to on stage, which only adds to the show’s mystique. “I know I had no idea what the scale of this was going to be, and audiences have no idea what they’re in store for, and I think that is really remarkable,” Trevor Dion Nicholas says. “[It’s] something that I don’t think you can experience anywhere else than in live theatre, let alone with a story like Hercules, let alone with the music of Hercules. I think we’re gonna knock people on their butts. They’re not ready for it.”

Disney’s ‘Hercules’ is playing at Theatre Royal Drury Lane from 24 June until 28 March 2026