Political musicals: from the forthcoming Berlusconi to Hamilton, it’s the gift that keeps on giving

We’re all totally obsessed with politics: while loathing nearly every element of the ever-shocking, oft-bewildering power plays of the elected few, we still can’t help spending our precious free time devouring their every move in newspapers and newsfeeds.

It makes sense, then, that audiences might want to sit down for an evening of more politics at the theatre, and even more sense that we enjoy seeing our politicians and historical figures dissected on stage in wicked and amusing forms.

Now it has been announced that Fleabag’s super-producer Francesca Moody is going to be taking on the provocative subject of Italian ex-PM Berlusconi in a new show that is being billed as a “naughty, noisy exposé of the original perma-tanned media mogul-turned-populist politician” – and pundits were, by and large, thrilled by the premise.

Here’s are some of the best (and possibly not so great) political musicals, past, present and future.

Berlusconi

Olivier-winning Francesca Moody MBE’s production company will take on this ambitious “modern-day cautionary tale” about the Italian media tycoon on the eve of the verdict of his tax fraud trial, as he looks back on his political career. To counter-balance all the cologne and testosterone, the play will be told through the perspectives of three women: Berlusconi’s second wife, Veronica Lario; the Milan magistrate who prosecutes the PM; and a female journalist who is an amalgamation of real-life people and testimonies.

“So much of the way he behaved is confounding and ridiculous – it’s easy to satirise that,” said Moody to The Guardian. Berlusconi will be “a good night out – but you leave the theatre feeling quite strange about how much you’ve been entertained by it,” she added.

Moody’s past work includes the stage productions of Fleabag, Baby Reindeer and Leopards, and she is set to produce the upcoming Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons (starring Poldark’s Aidan Turner and The Serpent’s Jenna Coleman) at the Harold Pinter Theatre in January.

Longtime collaborators Ricky Simmonds and Simon Vaughan, who met as children on the set of Grange Hill, have written the book, music and lyrics. James Grieve, the former Joint Artistic Director of Paines Plough, is set to direct and Rebecca Howell, who worked on The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾, will be choreographing the piece.

Moody described the upcoming production as “Evita on acid”.

Southwark Playhouse, March 25 to April 29, 2023, tickets available now, southwarkplayhouse.co.uk

Hamilton

There are few musicals which have reached the heady heights of Hamilton, which recounts the story of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton.

Songwriter and playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda’s seven-year-long passion project came up trumps: since its 2015 original off-Broadway release, the musical has won more than ten Tony awards, a Grammy award, and seven Olivier awards, has enjoyed back-to-back sold-out performances as the show transferred to the West End, back to North America, to Australia and to Hamburg, and has received near-universal acclaim. A global phenomenon, it even received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2016.

Alexander Hamilton was one of the late 18th-century leaders (alongside George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson) who established the governing body of the United States after the war of independence with Britain. The sung-and-rapped musical tells his remarkable life story.

Victoria Palace Theatre, booking to September 30, 2023, hamiltonmusical.com/london

Tony! The Rock Musical

A rock opera about Tony Blair? Sure. But with a number of “bad taste” gags about Princess Diana’s death, 9/11 and the Iraq War, and with, as the Standard’s Nick Curtis put it, “mugging, bovine hoofing and terrible wigs” this musical is absolutely not for everyone.

Created by comedian Harry Hill and his longtime collaborator Steve Brown, Tony! is described by the Park Theatre as “a hilarious tragedy” that “plays fast and loose with the facts”. With so much of Blair’s premiership being a tragedy - but not of the hilarious kind - the story about his life was always going to take some crowbarring to get to a fun place. Many reviewers think Hill succeeded: the play pulled in four stars from The Times and the Observer and five stars from the Daily Mail. Curtis, however, remained unconvinced.

Tony! The Rock Musical ran at the Park Theatre this summer, parktheatre.co.uk

Tammy Faye

Does this count as a political musical? We certainly think so - after all, it has 40th U.S. President Ronald Reagan talking about trickle-down economics at one point. Plus, there are surely few things more political than Christianity in the US. Fear not though, this musical is anything but dry: Elton John wrote the music, Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears wrote the lyrics and James Graham, who has written more than a dozen plays, including Labour of Love, set in a Labour MP’s constituency office, as well as Best of Enemies, a show about the origins of our combative political discourse now open in the West End, wrote the script.

Tammy Faye Bakker was a singer, author, talk show host and American evangelist who, with her husband Jim, became embroiled in several fraud and conspiracy cases in the late Eighties. She released three autobiographies, advocated for LGBT rights and on HIV/Aids issues, and co-founded the popular Christian TV show, The PTL Club, which had a 15-year run.

Tammy Faye’s world premiere was at the Almeida Theatre in October, where it was widely well-received. “There are some shows you never expect to see,” said the Standard’s Nick Curtis. “And a musical about a gay-friendly televangelist and America’s Christian right in the Seventies and Eighties... is one of them. But here it is and praise the lord, it’s a religious riot.”

Almeida Theatre until December 3, 2022 almeida.co.uk

Les Misérables

Victor Hugo’s magnus opus was an unlikely candidate for a musical. At around a whopping 2,700 pages (depending on the publication) the novel follows the life of peasant Jean Valjean, who is sent to jail for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread. Upon release, he reforms and becomes a mayor and industrialist. The 1862 novel is about Paris, politics, morality, monarchy, justice and religion and is set against the chaotic aftermath of the French revolution.

It’s quite remarkable, given the uncompromising premise, that in 1980 Claude-Michel Schönberg thought the tome would make a great musical. But the French producer was spot on. Over forty years later Les Mis is undoubtedly one of the world’s most famous stage shows. It has won both Tony Awards and Olivier Awards, has been adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Russell Crowe and Helena Bonham Carter, and has toured the world multiple times in its various productions.

Sondheim Theatre, booking to to October 1, 2023, lesmis.com/london

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson

Premiering seven years before Hamilton, this comedy rock musical about Seventh President Andrew Jackson (who held office from 1829 to 1837) did not enjoy the same level of success, but still did well. It received some great reviews, won several awards, premiered on Broadway in 2010, and toured around the US for several years. It became New York City’s Public Theatre’s second highest-grossing show of all time in the early 2010s, where it had its run extended three times.

Its music and lyrics were written by award-winning composer and artistic director Michael Friedman and its book was written by the highly acclaimed playwright Alex Timbers. The musical reimagines Jackson (who, among other things, owned hundreds of slaves, subscribing to the idea that human ownership was acceptable as long as the slaves were treated humanely, survived an assassination attempt; paid off the national debt - the only president to do so - and signed the Indian Removal Act, which caused the displacement of tens of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral homelands) as an emo rock star. Errr, sure?

In 2010, The New York Times’ Ben Brantley said: “There’s not a show in town that more astutely reflects the state of this nation than Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson… both smarter and cruder than your average Broadway fare.”

Assassins

With music and lyrics by musical theatre legend Stephen Sondheim, and a book by his longtime and award-winning collaborator John Weidman, Assassins was always going to pull in the crowds, even with this insane premise.

The musical brings together a motley crew, of some of the infamous figures who attempted - both successfully and not - to assassinate American presidents, and explores their place in American history. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Samuel Byck (who tried to assassinate Nixon) Charles J. Guiteau (who successfully assassinated James A. Garfield) and John Hinckley Jr. (who tried to kill Regan) all feature.

It opened Off-Broadway in 1990, received mixed reviews and had a short run of 73 shows. In 2004, however, it was revived on Broadway and went on to win five Tony Awards. Have we all just become way more cynical? The musical has since been revived in London in 2014 (one paper called the Catherine Tate-led production “aggressively visceral”) and again Off-Broadway in 2021.