A stage adaptation of The Greatest Showman has been a cinch since the 2017 film became one of the all-time biggest musical hits at the box office. Disney has one in development but in the meantime, pitched up between an office block and a padel club in Earl’s Court, this “circus spectacular” repurposes Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s imperishable anthems – several more than once – for a series of acrobatic routines.
The gossamer-thin narrative and the museum-styled venue both have tangential relevance to the film in which Hugh Jackman’s PT Barnum opens a house of curiosities before hitting the jackpot by replacing waxworks with live acts. En route to the big top for the show, theatregoers pass through a gallery where top hats are suspended from the ceiling, canes are framed on the wall and lurid posters promote a snake charmer, strongmen and other acts.
The inner arena is surrounded by Punchdrunk-style decor including dressing rooms, wagons and a fortune-teller’s shack. Mops are artfully arranged against one wall but there’s also a ritzy bar to get cocktails. Whether you’re at home among the swells or peanut shells, there’s no end of selfie opportunities.
Inside the big top, a small band perch on a balcony that resembles a hot air balloon basket. Simon Bailey stars as an imperious showman mentoring a newcomer (Aaliya Mai) who is encouraged to fulfil her potential and step out of the shadow of her toxic-seeming partner (played by Korri Aulakh). Despite this hint of the film’s succession arc, the plot – which comes with an unspectacular script and a helping of mystical circus hooey – is barely there. Too often the stories in Pasek and Paul’s vivid lyrics don’t match what we’re watching. It doesn’t help that nuance is lost in a throbbing sound design that makes the seating shudder.
There is little sense of spurned outsiders becoming glorious warriors and creating their own community. A scene using one of the film’s weaker numbers, Tightrope, does that best with the performers bonding in backstage-style tableaux while an upside down Antino Pansa teeters along a washing line on his hands.
The same song is used for an aerial act, marred by the showman’s OTT observations (“Oh my goodness, look at that!”). There is strength and skill on display including human towers, a quartet on a teeterboard to This Is Me riffs, and a retread of Rewrite the Stars which borrows the movie’s trapeze act and can’t help but suffer in comparison. The film’s dramatic blaze is acknowledged by a fun sequence of fire-eating and flaming batons.
Sometimes, there’s an awful lot of performers doing fairly standard circus business all at once. Two of the high points are much less fussy. As Charlotte-Hannah Jones, Whitney Martins and Fallon Mondlane sing Never Enough, a spinning Cyr wheel act perfectly suits its rippling refrain. A rendition of From Now On soars in its evocation of an itinerant troupe.
These are copper-bottomed songs but there aren’t enough for a show that, at 100 minutes, is more than twice the length of the soundtrack. Some of them are done a disservice by becoming additional rinky-dink instrumentals. While creative director Simon Hammerstein has engineered a spirited experience, it lacks a knockout performance. You can’t help but notice that Keala Settle from the film is headlining a much cheaper musical elsewhere in town.
• At the Empress Museum, London, until 30 March
