Fourteen years after it debuted on screen, audiences got their first glimpse of Burlesque on stage in 2024. Now it’s Sheffield’s turn for the final week of October 2026. Whilst Burlesque promises to be big, however, it often falls short. This ‘big new musical’ is extravagant and flashes lights in your face and blasts sound into your ears but there is so little behind the curtain you’re forgiven for second guessing its credentials. Behind the bombast and frills, this is a poor musical theatre show.
I’m happy to give the production its flowers where it earned them. Faye Brookes is great as the matriarchal Tess. Ryan Carter’s Sean is brilliant, and Vanessa Ela Young is formidable as Nikki. Tyler Davis offers a particularly layered performance as Jack and Macy Dermody Blythe commits well to curate a believable and enjoyable portrayal of Queenie. Gracie O’Brien makes a particularly stunning professional debut in this show as Ali. An actor fresh out of graduating from Mountview, she does herself a great service in this role. An absolute vocal powerhouse, she is one of the best vocal performers I’ve seen in recent years.
On vocals, they are pretty brilliant and dazzling across the board in this production, with all on stage in fine voice from curtain up to closing. Whilst one of the play’s problems is that many of the lyrics are indecipherable in the cloud of orchestral pizazz and rapid-fire deliveries, it can’t be argued that it sounds bad, even if we want more clarity. Sara Perks set design is playful and dynamic, as is Duncan McLean’s video and projection design at times. Joshie Harriette’s lighting design is inconsistent and patchy in the first act but feels cohesive and fully realised in the second act. There are aspects of the script that are quite humorous and well-played, and Marco Marco/Marco Morante’s costume design is pretty spectacular.
Robin Antin, Aaron Renfrew and Xena Gusthart’s choreography is decent. Some individual moments had a delightful slickness to them, snapping and clicking with great rhythmic resolve, and some of the larger ensemble routines felt focussed and refined. However, at times the choreography felt a little restrained. Where you might expect expansive moves there’s often resistance or hesitation, being a little messy and convoluted at times. The cast are inconsistent in delivering dance performances with that star power the show tries to send. Unfortunately, it’s noticeable that performers were often out of sync with one another, making lots of routines look clunky.
Steven Antin serves as creative director, writer and producer of this stage adaption of the film he also penned. The crux of much of this work’s downfall is a pointedly poor script at his hand. It brings me no joy to say but it’s perhaps one of the weakest musical texts I’ve seen performed on the Lyceum stage. The narrative is horrifically paced and extremely messy, not in a way that’s confusing or complicated, but in a way that is almost just incoherent. Relationships, time, place, wants, needs, consequence – all these key functions of story are garbled or simply non-existent. There are two-dimensional characters who look three-dimensional next to many of the play’s one-dimensional characters, and one-dimensional characters who are nearly nothing by contrast. Then, all these characters are either unlikeable or unknowable, and often unredeemable. There is a shockingly bad grasp of jeopardy and plot progression. The plot resolves itself at the end in an almost comically rushed and unearned fashion.
Racky Plews who directs this production also holds responsibility for a tonally confused musical theatre experience. The show does not know itself. We are not conditioned for the over-the-top humour that occasionally rears its head, nor the emotional beats that are so evidently forced into place with a contrived sentimentality. In Antin’s script not constructing a dense theatrical world with layered, enamouring characters who have recognisable desires and flaws, many scenes drawn by Plews that purport to reflect the existence of such things expectedly fail to, creating identifiably bad illusions. The show wants to be taken seriously yet simultaneously is ridiculous and knowingly so. It wants to be fierce and racy but is equally goofy in a way that does not always endear and is at times conservative in its explicitness and lacklustre in its dramatic edge. The only thing it does know that it is, and semi-delivers on, is that it’s flashy and brash.
Startlingly there is a lack of heart to this show. Not lack of effort, but lack of heart. Nobody is naive enough to come to Burlesque: The Musical expecting the hysterical existentialism of Beckett, or the surreal transgressions of Artaud. There is no shame in a brand of theatre that seeks to excite and entertain first and foremost – but this production feels so sardonic and shallow that is makes it hard to get on board with. It feels cynical in its hollowness, spiteful in its vacuousness. It feels like it doesn’t care about its audience and that believing its own hype is enough. In my view it isn’t.
Burlesque is running at Sheffield Theatres Lyceum until Saturday 31st October. You can find ticket information via Sheffield Theatres website.
Reviewer: Louis Thompson
Reviewed: 27th October 2026
North West End UK Rating: