This is some show!
Having watched Jersey Boys at the Edinburgh Playhouse the previous evening, I thought I had witnessed musical theatre at its most polished and professional. Twenty-four hours later, Sylvia at the Festival Theatre took the whole business to another level.
The comparison is fascinating. Jersey Boys has the considerable advantage of being built around songs that generations already know and love. Recognition and nostalgia do much of the heavy lifting. Sylvia has no such luxury. We arrived knowing none of its songs, yet for two hours and forty-five minutes this extraordinary production held our attention almost without respite. That is no small achievement.
Written by Kate Prince and Priya Parmar, with music by Josh Cohen and DJ Walde, Sylvia tells the story of Sylvia Pankhurst and the struggle for women’s suffrage in early twentieth-century Britain. There are inevitable comparisons with Hamilton, particularly in its predominantly sung-through narrative, contemporary rhythms and historical subject matter. But there is much more here. Gospel, soul, rap, hip-hop and even echoes of Sister Act combine in a musical vocabulary that is both wonderfully eclectic and remarkably coherent.
At its heart is Naomi Katiyo’s compelling Sylvia, with Beverley Knight delivering a commanding performance as her mother, Emmeline Pankhurst. Yet it seems almost unfair to single out individuals from an ensemble of such exceptional quality. Tachia Newall’s Keir Hardie and Castell Parker’s Winston Churchill are particularly memorable, while Kenedy Small brings tremendous energy to Jennie Churchill. Throughout, the standard of singing, acting and movement is quite extraordinary.
Kate Prince’s direction and choreography are simply breathtaking. The movement is relentless without becoming exhausting, constantly shifting between intimate exchanges and spectacular ensemble sequences. The second act opens with a wonderfully inventive demonstration of Suffrajitsu, the martial art associated with the suffragette movement. Martial arts techniques, high kicks, sweeps and punches become part of the choreography, the disciplined patterns of combat transformed into dance. It is exhilarating, witty and beautifully executed.
But what elevates Sylvia beyond even its considerable musical achievements is the astonishing integration of its visual elements.
Ben Stones’ set and costume design establishes a predominantly monochromatic world, evoking the black-and-white photographs of the Edwardian period. Against this restrained palette, the occasional flash of colour becomes extraordinarily powerful. Keir Hardie’s red scarf recalls Spielberg’s selective use of red in Schindler’s List, while carrying its own unmistakable political associations.
As the production moves into its second act, colour gradually seeps into the picture. Muted pinks and reds begin to enrich the stage, recalling, in a different way, the transition from monochrome to Technicolor in The Wizard of Oz. It is a beautifully judged transformation, made all the more effective by the restraint that precedes it.
Even the projected proscenium arch, with its striking geometric language reminiscent of Art Deco, contributes to the production’s extraordinary visual coherence. It is one of countless small details that anchor Sylvia beautifully in time and space.
The frame itself becomes much more than a theatrical boundary. Within it, the performers create a succession of living photographs, almost paintings, constantly rearranging themselves into beautifully composed tableaux. The illuminated, stepped edge of the stage allows the performers to sit, stand and sing on the very boundary of the picture, occasionally appearing to step out of history itself.
Natasha Chivers and Hector Murray’s lighting design is equally effective, working in perfect harmony with Andrzej Goulding’s video and animation. At the rear of the stage, a mesh screen conceals the live musicians, occasionally revealing them through backlighting before transforming once more into a surface for projected scenery. It is an extraordinarily versatile arrangement, allowing the production to move effortlessly between locations and moods without interrupting its momentum.
Tony Gayle’s sound design is perfection, balancing the powerful live music with an impressive clarity of vocals. Under musical director Sean Green, the musicians provide a thrilling accompaniment to Josh Cohen and DJ Walde’s exhilarating score, while Mark Dickman’s orchestrations help give the production its remarkable musical range.
The diverse casting brings another dimension to the storytelling, allowing historical figures to inhabit a contemporary musical world without becoming constrained by conventional expectations of period drama. The transition between rap, gospel, soul and more traditional musical forms feels entirely natural. History is being retold in a new theatrical language, and the result is remarkably accessible.
Of course, no self-respecting theatre critic can allow a production to escape entirely unscathed, and there are a few niggles here. There is obviously an enormous amount of history to accommodate, and occasionally the narrative becomes a succession of events rather than a fully developed exploration of them. Complex political arguments are necessarily compressed, sometimes at the expense of character development. Yet such is the confidence and inventiveness of the staging that these moments seldom interrupt the production’s extraordinary momentum.
More significantly, for a production that so enthusiastically embraces multicultural casting, Sylvia has remarkably little to say about race itself. Nor does it venture far into the uncomfortable territory of British imperialism and the attitudes of some of the historical figures it portrays, Churchill among them. The suffrage movement existed within a much wider world of social and racial inequality and acknowledging some of those contradictions might have given the narrative an additional layer of complexity. It is perhaps a missed opportunity in a production otherwise so determined to challenge the conventions of historical storytelling.
Anyway, whatever its flaws, and they all have them, I struggle to remember another musical that has balanced so many different creative disciplines quite so successfully. Sylvia is not simply a history lesson set to music, nor merely a spectacular evening of entertainment. It is a complete theatrical artwork, conceived and executed with extraordinary imagination, intelligence and confidence.
Jersey Boys reminded us how wonderful familiar songs can be when brought to life on stage. Sylvia reminds us just how much further musical theatre can go.
Quite simply, outstanding.
Reviewer: Greg Holstead
Reviewed: 13th October 2026
North West End UK Rating:
Running time – 2hrs 45mins (including interval)