LIGHTNING BOY
"A bolt of musical joy."
A Young(ish) Perspective
Birmingham Hippodrome Patrick Studio
Birmingham, UK
NYMT Summer Season
21st August - 23rd August 2025
Written by: Turner and Warden
Director: Kate Golledge
Musical Director and Orchestrator: Lee Freeman
Designer: Sophia Pardon
Choreographer: Aimee Leigh
"It's Hercules, meets Hairspray, meets Succession."
National Youth Music Theatre in partnership with Birmingham Hippodrome presents: Lightning Boy.
Sixteen-year-old Zeus is trapped in a storm, struggling to survive under the oppressive rule of his tyrannical father and dysfunctional brothers. By day, he works tirelessly at the Sky High Diner atop Mount Olympus with his loyal friends, the Olympians, and his forbidden mortal love, Io, dreaming of a freedom that always seems just out of reach. But when an unexpected betrothal, sudden banishment, and a treacherous political plot shake his world, Zeus must race against time to discover what kind of god – and man – he’s truly destined to be.
"Once again with NYMT we are in the company of future superstars and Lightning Boy really is no different."
Musical Theatre Review
Photography by Pamela Raith
South American transfer of Anomaly (2019)
Direction: Cecilia Cabellero
Translation: Federico De Roca
Teatro La Escena
Montevideo, Uruguay
6th August 2022 - 2nd October 2022
"La Verdad Los Hara Libres"
"Watching the Harvey Weinstein case in October 2017, I couldn't help but wonder what would happen to his young children after the story exploded in the media. How they would be treated in school when the name "Weinstein" is read and how unfair it is that one man's actions, their father's, will inevitably impact their lives forever. This isn't a play about just one powerful man, nor is it about Hollywood, it's a play about what is not spoken about, what is hidden; the media and it's hypocrisy. But most of all it's a play about three daughters desperately trying to put the shattered pieces of a family back together. The truth is coming out. But are we ready to hear it?"
"I must warn anyone who decides to witness this play that your attention capacity must be at two hundred percent to enjoy this work to the fullest"
Jorge Mario Bologna Corbi
Photography by Reinaldo Altamirano
The Old Red Lion Theatre
London, UK
Direction: Adam Small
2nd January - 8th February 2019
Post Weinstein. Post Spacey. Pre Preston.
It’s 6am. News has just broken that Phillip Preston, media mogul and film-industry powerhouse has been arrested for assaulting his wife.
His three daughters, who now lead very separate and very public lives, are left with the fallout. As they battle the world’s press, the board members of Preston International and each other, they soon find themselves not only fighting to save the Preston dynasty but to protect everything they know to be true.
Photography by Headshot Toby
The Other Palace Theatre
London, UK
Direction: Liv Warden
19th-20th April 2019
It’s 1940s England: a country ravaged by war. When a young girl finds her mother’s abandoned storybook, Hansel and Gretel, she feels a glimmer of hope. But faced with her daughter's evacuation and grieving all that she has lost, Sophie refuses to let her Daisy be a child any longer; terrified that she is not prepared to be sent away alone.
Inside the story, the characters are bored without an audience; 20 years of the book being closed and no story to tell clearly taking its toll. Hansel is comfort eating the gingerbread house, The Witch has gone on a murderous rampage and The Woodcutter and his Wife are in the midst of a messy divorce. Gretel leaves her home behind in search of answers about the dying forest, and stumbles across a heartbreaking reality that nobody in Fairywood was prepared for...
Gretel! is a tale of childhood, loyalty, and the power of fantasy to arm us against a dark reality. In a world where your fate is seemingly already written, it’s a reminder that we all have the power to create our own story – for sometimes destiny could use a little help.
Photography by Anton Belmonté