Curtain opens on new musicals in Birmingham

Published: 28 January 2025
Reporter: Steve Orme

James Chisholm and Kate Ivory Jordan in Feet Keep Me Flyin' at BEAM2023 Credit: David Ovenden
Jessica Boshier in Lovestuck at BEAM2023 Credit: David Ovenden

Excerpts from 28 new musicals will be unveiled at BEAM2025, “the largest gathering for the UK’s new musical theatre community”.

Musical Theatre Network and Mercury Musical Developments will present the showcase at their new home, Birmingham Hippodrome, after both organisations relocated from London. In 2023 the Hippodrome created the UK’s first in-house new musical theatre department.

The event will feature excerpts from musicals selected through an intensive nationwide search. More than 35 musicals which were staged at previous BEAM events have gone on to have full productions. Operation Mincemeat by David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson and Zoë Roberts has been running at London’s Fortune Theatre since March 2023 while Jim Barne and Kit Buchan’s Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) had a four-month run at the Criterion Theatre, London in 2024.

Lovestuck, conceived and written by James Cooper with direction by Jamie Morton which took to the stage at BEAM2023, will have its first full production at Theatre Royal Stratford East in June 2025.

Natalia Scorer, executive director of Mercury Musical Developments, said, “BEAM is an incredible platform for discovering and celebrating new talent in musical theatre. This year’s event will feature musicals selected from 356 pitches across the UK, showcasing the depth and diversity of creativity in our industry.”

James Hadley, executive director of Musical Theatre Network, added, ‘‘the journey of creating a musical is often like an iceberg, with most work taking more than five years to reach the stage. BEAM aims to bring more new musicals and talent from across the UK to wider industry attention from earlier on in their journeys.”

BEAM2025 will take place on Thursday 15 and Friday 16 May. Tickets cost £125 or £70 for concessions. They are available at the Birmingham Hippodrome web site.

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