The Lightning Thief: this soggy musical is a tiresomely right-on take on Greek mythology
If you haven’t recently been a 12-year-old, or the parent of one, you might yet be unaware of the hydra headed Percy Jackson phenomenon. Yet Rick Riordan’s mega selling adventure series, about Greek mythology and a dyslexic, ADHD-afflicted teenager, has spawned its own Olympian universe of game and movie adaptations.
It’s distinctly 21st century coming-of-age source material, with an abundance of teenage angst concerning self-esteem, neurodiversity and absent, disinterested parents – and ripe for repeated packaging. Hence this new musical which arrives in London a good ten years after its off Broadway premiere: a fact in itself that ought to set alarm bells ringing.
Sorry to sound cynical – the Percy Jackson books are terrific. They are an excellent primer to Greek mythology that make the crazy internecine world of the gods thrilling and accessible; my 11-year-old loves them. But this theatrical iteration is lazy and dull. Its lo-fi rough and ready aesthetic may gesture at a theatrical authenticity distinct from big screen CGI, but in truth it rests entirely on its IP.
Adapted by Joe Tracz, it’s based on the first book in the series – the Jackson origin myth – in which our jittery teenage misfit, brought up in New York by his single mother, discovers his true “half blood” identity as the son of Poseidon after a Fury attacks him at school. Despatched to summer camp for similar half blood teenagers (and presided over by the furiously misanthropic Dionysus; played by Joe Allen, great fun), he and the similarly screwed up offspring of Pan and Athena embark on a quest to find the stolen lightning bolt and avert all out war between Hades and Zeus.
If only Tracz had given us more quest and less inner pain. Instead a fair amount of the two and a half hour running time is bogged down in Rob Rokicki’s screechy, run-of-the-mill, rock-fuelled power ballads that express – at great length yet with sluggish pace – how much our young protagonists feel the pressure to not fail. Tracz’s po-faced virtue signalling book has flattened the original to produce in our three heroes walking cyphers – Jackson, the misunderstood loner; Annabeth, the fierce and feisty warrior privately desperate to prove herself to her mother (and who, in a crass moment of icky vulnerability lets slip her mum forgot her birthday) and Grover, the dweeby, unfailingly loyal sidekick. Max Harwood, Jessica Lee and Scott Folan give it their all, but it’s all very sub Dear Evan Hanson.
Meanwhile the actual quest itself is bunged and confusing – and includes a talking squirrel and a combusting bus, neither of which fit into a coherent sense of jeopardy. And while Lizzi Gee’s production has moments of Kaos-style fun – amongst a hard-working ensemble cast, Greg Barnett’s Californian surfer dude Poseidon is a delight, while Paisley Billings’s Charon is a wannabe disco soul diva – there is precious little attempt to render the mystical realm of gods and monsters with a freshly animating theatrical language. The younger members of the audience seemed to have a ball. But everyone else will find the emotional piety borderline unbearable.
Runs at The Other Palace until Mar 2. Tickets: percyjacksonmusical.com