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‘they’re About The Mess Of Being Human’: How The Mental Health Musical Won Over The West End

Jazz hands and big ballads are out and ‘writing about real emotions’ is in, as a new wave of musicals exploring body issues, bullying and queer identity hits the capital’s biggest stages. What’s behind this taste for introspection?

A new breed of musical theatre is rising amid the jukebox singalongs and well-worn classics of the West End stage. It is the mental health musical, an all-singing, all-dancing genre bringing identity and personal crises to the fore. This means many new musicals are preceded by trigger warnings that the performance to come may feature suicidal teens and sexual assault such as in the case of Spring Awakening; bullying and queer identity in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie; high school violence in Heathers the Musical;, and even a bipolar mother undergoing electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in Next to Normal.

How did such dark, introspective material establish itself in the West End and why is it gaining such traction with audiences? Musicals are, after all, predicated on song and dance, not exactly conducive to explorations of difficult and intimate mental health issues, especially within the modern British tradition led by the big, balladic sounds of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh’s West End shows.

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‘they’re About The Mess Of Being Human’: How The Mental Health Musical Won Over The West End

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