ajhlovestheatre

FLYBY

written and composed by Theo Jamieson

co-created and directed by Adam Lenson

Southwark Playhouse Borough, London – until 16 May 2026

running time: 1 hour 45 minutes no interval 

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/flyby/

Nobody could accuse director and creative technician Adam Lenson of lack of ambition. He constantly pushes the boundaries of musical theatre, his output ranging from a reclamation of Kander and Ebb’s esteemed Broadway flop The Rink at Southwark Playhouse, and the Brontë sisters set to emo-rock (Wasted at the same address) to a deeply personal reflection on illness and life choices (Anything That We Wanted To Be at the Edinburgh Fringe). He also helmed the UK premieres of Adam Gwon’s Ordinary Days (Trafalgar Studios…remember them?!) and Michael John LaChiusa’s Little Fish at Finborough, a pair of quirky, artsy small scale American musicals whose shadows hang subtly over FlyBy.

That’s not to suggest that there’s anything unoriginal about this rogue collaboration between Lenson and writer-composer Theo Jamieson, it’s one of the most unconventional musicals I’ve seen in a lifetime of theatregoing. But it undoubtedly owes more in terms of style and content to the off-centre avant garde creations of NYC MT artists who march to the beat of their own drums, than it does to the work of West End and Broadway creatives aiming at the more mass-populist West End and Broadway markets. It has some wondrous things in it, but equally it has plenty to ponder over.

For starters, there’s the story. Put simply, young couple Daniel (Stuart Thompson) and Emily (Poppy Gilbert) split up pretty traumatically so he heads off into the further reaches of Outer Space (were there no air fares available to a distant corner of this planet?!) leaving her to record increasingly desperate messages of apology on his voicemail. It’s a bizarre premise, and Lenson’s production begins with a trio of scientific types (Rupert Young, Gina Beck, Simbi Akande) pontificating over Daniel’s motivations and looking back to the lead-up of events to his interplanetary breakdown. 

The chronological order of this tall tale is deliberately messed about with so you have to be pretty on-the-ball to work out where in the relationship any given scene is occurring. Few young actors are as fine as Thompson (the Almeida Spring Awakening, the Globe Ghosts and last year’s Radiant Boy here at Southwark) at creating fragile young men with rich but tormented inner lives and he is as good as possible here, but the writing doesn’t give him much to work with. Gilbert fares worse with the damaged but curiously unsympathetic Emily, coming across as mostly shouty and strident in the book scenes. You mainly find yourself hoping her voice will hold out for the run.

There’s a shimmering evanescence to Jamieson’s music, by turns delicate then bombastic, that sometimes recalls the current Broadway smash Maybe Happy Ending. It’s not exactly tuneful but, in Jamieson’s own orchestration, it is powerfully theatrical at times and occasionally it’s really gorgeous. His lyrics are terse and effective, but periodically nod at the anything-for-a-rhyme school of songwriting that does nobody any favours, not least Emily whose big solo sees her describing herself as “a killer, an Attila the Hun, an army of one” which is…unfortunate. Some sections even veer towards rap and work surprisingly well.

Lenson is responsible for the dazzling video design which sees Libby Todd’s simple but attractive set transformed into a hotel room, the sky at night, the interior of a space capsule, and endless banks of ever-increasing data. Visually and aurally, this production is mostly a real treat. Ben Kubiak’s accomplished six piece band are sometimes glimpsed behind the gauzy backdrop, and Ben Jacobs’ lighting is genuinely transformative.

As the trio of observers who form a kind of boffins Greek chorus sometimes breaking off to play subsidiary characters, Young, Beck and Akande all have potent presences with voices to match. Akande is the most underused but has a unique grace and authority; Young does grand work as Emily’s slippery, manipulative father, while Beck, who’s incapable of giving a bad performance, brings a touching brittleness to her betrayed mother. 

In its present form, FlyBy feels too esoteric and unfocused to fully satisfy. Giving Daniel the surname Defoe is a cute literary joke but such whimsy as this, and the frankly bizarre ending which features a life-size sea turtle for reasons too random to go into here, doesn’t coalesce with the examination of past trauma and a failing relationship. As written here, Emily and Daniel are (whisper it) just not that interesting, and that’s a problem in a show so centred on them. It’s just pretty hard to care.

For all its flaws though, FlyBy is legitimately trying to advance music theatre as a form and that needs to be acknowledged and applauded. It needs extensive work to give it more human interest and dramatic drive; not every show needs to be delightful or even comprehensible to all, but currently this musical/modern opera hybrid is more frustrating than engaging.