Last chance to glimpse the edge of the sky
There's still time to see this gorgeous show before it closes
A shortie today (I know I always say that) but I wanted to flag the imminent and frankly sad closure of a really excellent show before it’s too late to book in to see it.
Standing at the Sky’s Edge, now on at the Gillian Lynne Theatre until August 3, blew me away when I first saw it at the Sheffield Crucible in 2019. Built by the writer Chris Bush around the music and lyrics of Richard Hawley and titled after the musician’s 2012 album of the same name, it tells the story of three generations of residents in one flat at Park Hill, an iconic brutalist Sheffield housing estate completed in 1961 on the site of degraded back-to-back housing, and representing, at the time, a breath of fresh modernist air.
Inevitably, as with so much good-intentions architecture of the era, the buildings fairly rapidly began to show their limitations, with residents complaining that they could no longer keep an eye on their kids from higher floors, maintenance of lifts and other facilities wasn’t good enough, and it was easy to become isolated.
The ‘streets in the sky’ simply didn’t foster the same kind of social cohesion as streets on the ground. In the late 70s and early 80s the now rather shabby estate became known for crime rather than community.
In 1998 though, the development was controversially Grade II* listed (it remained structurally sound, unlike many others) and in 2004, developer Urban Splash, in partnership with English Heritage, embarked on a long-term, on-going renovation of Park Hill, to create a mixed-use development made up of market rent properties, privately owned flats, shared-ownership and social housing. In other words, it was gentrified, with all that that entails.
Standing at the Sky’s Edge deals with all of this through the joys and trials of three sets of residents from 1961 to the 2010s, and I’m here to tell you that it’s wonderful. A musical for people who don’t think they like musicals, it’s cool enough that you won’t feel embarrassed about the people belting (and my God can they sing) in front of you, and thoughtful enough that you’ll go away with lots to talk about.
Directed by Rob Hastie, the now-outgoing artistic director of Sheffield Theatres, it’s beautifully put together, seamlessly chopping and changing between the generations (the design, by Ben Stones, and choreography, by Lynne Page, are exquisite), making you laugh, capturing your heart - and then breaking it - and revealing the threads that run through it at an unhurried pace that makes you feel as if you’re becoming part of the community yourself.
I don’t really know why it’s closing early. It did well at Sheffield, where it was revived in 2022 before a triumphant run at the National Theatre in 2023 (where I saw it for a second time), so I can’t really see why it hasn’t had traction in the West End. The Gillian Lynne is a bit on the edge at the very top of Drury Lane and admittedly looks a bit like a car park (actually quite appropriate, architecturally), but it did fine for The Lehman Trilogy, so I don’t think it’s that.
Perhaps Standing at the Sky’s Edge falls into a conceptual gap - if you’re a musical theatre person, then Richard Hawley may not seem your bag (this is a mistake I think; the arrangements are great and the singing is just knockout) and if you don’t know his music, which lots of people won’t, then you won’t think, “Oh, I must see that.”
And I suppose if you know nothing about it and people tell you it’s a musical about a Sheffield housing estate, that’s not necessarily going to have you running for the ticket booth.
Which is a shame, because it’s a really lovely show. All of which is to say I think you should book tickets and see it before it closes. Tickets start at £39.50.
I’ll be doing the TV review on Hugo Rifkind’s Times Radio show (with Jeremy Griffin this week, Hugo is at Glastonbury) on Saturday morning from 11.30am to 12pm. Have a listen here live or afterwards.
I just can’t quite work it out, you might be right
It really is a glorious piece of British working class musical theatre and in a par with Blood Brothers. I tried to build a hypothesis about why it hasn't been the enormous hit it should be but the producers covered a lot of ground in terms of publicity including a live performance on Radio 2 which is demographic heaven for musical theatre. Maybe it was just momentum and the show needed a transfer right after its NT run rather than waiting