Hercules, Theatre Royal Drury Lane review - new Disney stage musical is no 'Lion King'

Many years ago, reviewing pantomime for the first time, I recall looking around in the stalls. My brain was saying, “This is terrible, the jokes are lame, the acting execrable and the set garish.” My eyes were saying, “These kids are loving it, their parents are liking it enough, and the cast are having a great time.” There was joy everywhere in the house, so who was I to play The Grinch?

That memory went through my mind standing at the box office 90 minutes before the curtain, surrounded by merch aimed at the coach parties being disgorged outside. An American family from central casting – thirtysomething father, mother and boy, girl, both pre-teens – were buying late availability tickets for the matinée. The father didn’t ask the price, but he did ask if there were places to eat nearby – Covent Garden is the width of a street away. At that point, I wondered about for whom I was reviewing the show – me, with a recent five-star opinion of Anna Karenina just a click away or Joe and Josie Tex and kids? I’m still not sure now.

Hercules is Disney IP, at least this Hercules is, and, betting without the Pixar masterpieces, I have to go back to the astonishing 1940 Pinocchio to find something from that canon I really enjoyed (okay, I’ll give you “Let It Go” and “Do you want to build a Snowman”). Retaining the movie’s book by Robert Horn (updated by Kwarme Kwei-Armah) and songs (including some new ones) by Alan Menken and David Zippel, I decided to see the show, and review it through the lens of Joe and Josie and not Gary. That’s added a couple of hundred words and a star to this piece, but my kids went from Disney to Pixar to Ghibli in about two years – so fair, I think. You have to start somewhere on the animation to stage journey.

Herc (yes, they do call him Herc) is the son of Zeus and Hera, but his evil uncle Hades is out to usurp his brother with only our sturdy infant in his way. He inveigles a couple of comic henchmen to poison the babe-in-arms in order to turn the God mortal so he can kill him. They botch the job, and the baby is abandoned, raised by a woman, who then disappears out of the story, and grows to become a gawkish, awkwardly strong teenager who doesn’t fit in. When he learns that he has to do something that no God has done before to regain full divine status and be received on Mount Olympus, he’s off on a quest or two. Meanwhile, Hades has engaged the beautiful, feisty Meg to sabotage his plans and, well, you can guess the rest.

All this exposition takes a hefty chunk out of the first act, but we’ve a Greek Chorus to help us. The Muses (Brianna Ogunbawo, Candace Furbert, Malinda Parris, Sharlene Hector, Robyn Rose-Li pictured below) are big on belting and stacked with sass and return intermittently in an array of sparkling outfits, like Six’s Queens, minus one. We also get the same exposition – you have to say everything twice to The Distracted Generation – from a high camp Hades, Stephen Carlile going full Abanazar from Alladin. I found my mind wandering to Russian Structuralism’s analysis of fairytales for some light relief, but Joe and co were enjoying the show and I soon snapped back.A giant monster or two appear! But they’re a bit on the cheap side compared to the RSC’s Totoros a five-minute walk away at The Gillian Lynne Theatre and more touchy-feely than terrifying, though a late appearance of Hades, all fiery-eyed, inspired by Oz in the movie version of Wicked, did raise the stakes a little. Much of the thrust of Dane Laffrey’s design relied on more gold than shines at Trump Tower, which may nod in the direction of the film, but I’ve seen enough of that aesthetic over the last few years.

Luke Brady largely comprises toothy grins and boyish charm as Herc the hero and Mae Ann Jorolan is all girl power at first, but Meg soon melts in the face of muscles and magnetism. Their chemistry, so often the weakest element of any Disney-related work, barely sparks despite a kiss more passionate than I expected. And, even if it’s down to the genre and provenance, it proves a depressingly orthodox lesson on the value of gender roles that’s certainly outdated in 2025. 

The songs are at their best when the Muses are doing their Pussycat Dolls routines on the oft-reprised “Gospel Truth” and the big first act closer, “Zero to Hero”. Their numbers are so big that it’s a bit of a disappointment when Calliope and co have to make way for Brady and Jorolan, who both sing well enough, but there’s no real 11 o’clock number and Herc is just too boybandish to convince in the more poignant moments. Though he sometimes appears very conveniently, Trevor Dion Nicholas has a lot of fun with Phil, Herc’s trainer, who, 25 years ago, would have been chomping on a cigar that he’d only remove to sing his numbers. It’s a continual source of irritation that the minor characters are rather more interesting than the leads!

Suddenly, there’s a rallying of the people, another big, if hardly violent, fight with Hades, a Romeo and Juliet style resurrection, but with a happy ending, bows and a curtain to save us from the glow of the gold at last. It’s almost like the director, Casey Nicholaw, gave an hour over to exposition, but split it 90% to 10% for each half. I wasn’t quite sure what had happened in that finale nor how, but I’m sure they all lived happily ever after.

Not for the first time, I was struck by the fact that there are fewer and fewer traditional pantomimes in London these days and those that remain are more aimed at adults than kids, everyone a little fearful about the stereotyping and punching down that lie at the heart of so many stories and characters. But the spirit of panto is too strong, and too commercially lucrative, to hold back for long, and it keeps popping up in shows like this.

That may induce a sigh from me, but I suspect Joe Tex and family felt they got their money’s worth. Which is exactly what shows like this – productions that come with overpriced, oversized souvenir programmes – aim to do. In that sense, it’s hardly fair to knock Hercules just because it’s not Guys and Dolls or Sweeney Todd. So I won’t.  

• Hercules at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane 
• More theatre reviews on theartsdesk