Back to the Future the Musical, John Frost for Crossroads live and Colin Ingram Inc, Sydney Lyric Theatre, til 25 Jan 2026

 

I don't want to kick a show when it's down - this is a show which has already announced an earlier-than-planned closing in January - but really, this is a case of a production that was ill-concieved from the start and only got a few minor improvements on the way through development. The "Popular Movie: The Musical" approach isn't always a disaster - a stage version can find new angles, pep up the action with some fun tunes, and bring an old property into new life - but in this case, it's mostly resulted in a story you can buy on DVD for $16 or stream on a range of streaming services being interrupted by songs that are at best servicable and at worst actively annoying. I will admit after a long night of Shakesperean Tragedy I was as eager to watch something with a flynig car and the moment when the car flies is kinda cool but it's a lot of show to sit through for a cool curtain call moment.

I do kinda get why it's a musical - the original film has two highlight music moments ("Johnny B. Goode" and "The Power of Love") and these are dutifuly recreated here. But most of  the remaining original songs fail to really be anything more than time-killers. Most of the performers are stuck reiterating performance decisions made when the original movie was made - Axel Duffy, Ethan Jones and Thomas McGuane may be talented actors but they're mostly stuck doing line readings originally created by Michael J Fox, Crispin Glover and Thomas F. Wilson around forty years ago. Roger Bart at least gives Doc Brown a little of his own yiddish vaudeville energy (and lends a powerful voice to songs that absolutely don't deserve it like "It Works" and "Ths one's For the Dreamers", both of which pretty much say everything they're going to say by the time their title has been sung). Ashleign Rubenach does benefit from a role that doesn't have performance gimmicks locked in so she can play her own bat and is delightful in all scenes.

Director John Rando does come up with some clever ideas for how to tell the story in a medium that doesn't really allow close-ups and goes all-out in the climactic race-against-lightning finale, but everyone is battling against material that really isn't good enough and wouldn't have hit the stage if it wasn't for the original movie being so beloved. Even on discount this is really only worth it if you want to tick Roger Bart off your bucket list of performers or if you really want to see a flying car and missed "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang".