The Big Life

This show has now closed, click here for a listing of current and future London shows

Musical Opened 23 May 2005, Closed 1 October 2005

Apollo Theatre Shaftesbury Avenue, London

"A sizzler for the summer - A glorious uplifting musical" The Daily Mail

The new musical The Big Life is a feel-good ska musical which transports the plot of Shakespeare's Love's Labours Lost to 1950's London. On the Windrush over from the Caribbean to England, a pact is made by a group of men not to get involved with women for three years while they work to better themselves... but Cupid has another plan!

We comin big time we comin
Kyan wait to get to inglan
Wi mek it big in a inglan
Mek it rich and be a hot boy
Mek it all de way...

The Big Life promises a funny, sad, uplifting, joyous, rip-roaring, toe-tapping and tear-jerking white-knuckle-ride. An emotional roller-coaster that sweeps you back to the time when Caribbean migrants came to London in the hope of carving out a better life for themselves.

"War over, and Big City begin to work on ship and travel all about. One day the ship dock in London and he went to Piccadilly Circus and watch the big life. When the ship sail Big City stay behind" Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners, 1956

This production was originally seen for two sell-out seasons at The Stratford East Theatre in East London.

"A joyous celebration" The Daily Express

"At Stratford East, Paul Joseph's and Paul Sirett's show about the generation of West Indians who came to Britain on the Windrush was rightly celebrated for putting on the stage experiences which hadn't been seen there before. But it's also remarkable as a show which, while following with impresssive fidelity the plot of Love's Labours Lost, relies on tunes for its life. You can't last for a minute here without bumping into a harmony... The harshness of life for Fifties immigrants is touched on... but it's the rush of ska, calypso and gospel that gives shade and inwardness and individuality to a clarion-voiced cast... a buoyant, exhilarating show." The Observer

"An astonishing night. Glorious singing. Delightful choreography, tremendous staging. A terrific show" The Daily Telegraph

"This big, blazing, ebullient show blows into the West End from Stratford East like a benevolent tornado... An incident of racism is inserted, as if Sirett thought people shouldn't forget it, but it doesn't fit the show, which is about warm-hearted immigrants sorting themselves out in a very odd country. Never mind. The show has heart, guts, infectious humour and a wonderful cast of actor-singer-dancers who simply raise the roof." The Sunday Times

"Exhilarating... Joyous... A delight... The kind of contagious joy that will have the aisles jumping" The Independent

"At the end of The Big Life the audience stood up and cheered: as they have done on every one of the three occasion I've seen this musical. With its catchy songs and charming cast, if you don't come out of it smiling, you need therapy, not theatre... It's not a flash production - settings are hinted at, rather than reproduced - but its enthusiasm sweeps you along... There are some killer individual voices but its the ensemble singing that raises the hairs on your neck... This charismatic musical is a good time in a smart package, a joyful night out with just enough grit to make you think as well as smile." The Sunday Telegraph

The Big Life was created at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, which is in Newham in the East End of London, where the boarding house which features in the show is situated. After four and a half years of development including two workshops and two full productions of the show at the Theatre Royal, it has highly appropriately come to the Apollo Theatre which is in sight of another scene-setting in the show, Piccadilly Circus.

Some eight years ago the Theatre Royal began its Musical Theatre Workshop Development Project which, with the vital help of annual visits from two lecturers from the Tisch School in New York, Fred Carl and Robed Lee, has brought many new talents into the theatre. The Big Life would not have found its particular combination of collaborators it Stratford East had not initiated its new musicals project. Playwright Paul Sirett had had four plays staged at the Theatre Royal Stratford East before he came up with the idea for The Big Life, but the composer Paul Joseph had never even seen a musical, let alone written one, when he joined the Theatre Royal's first Musical Theatre Workshop in 1998. The West End production of The Big Life has been championed by the West End's most prolific producer, Bill Kenwright. The Big Life seems to have found its natural second home in Westminster, where it proudly claims to be the first musical in the West End set in a British black community.