‘Back To The Future The Musical’: A Blast In The Past

How do you adapt one of the best blockbusters of all time for the stage? There’s no single correct way to do it, but the Sydney production of Back to the Future: The Musical has a pretty good answer – preserve what makes the original so beloved while cranking the theatrics up to 11.

Indeed, this show based on Robert Zemeckis’ iconic 1985 film is a genuinely fun adaptation and stage show in its own right with a great cast and sincerely incredible special effects. It starts a little slow in its opening twenty minutes, but once Back to the Future The Musical gets up to 88, it’s a blast – if a somewhat predictable one.

Besides the inciting incident of the plot – Doc Brown begins dying from radiation exposure before Marty travels to the past rather than being shot by Libyan terrorists, a fairly tactful change – Back to the Future The Musical follows the film’s plot practically to a tee. As with many musical versions of films, it does this while finding space for musical numbers that elaborate on how the characters feel in that moment and injecting the plot with a musical sensibility.

At the beginning of the show, I was wondering if this was going to work for Back to the Future. There are a few somewhat underwhelming musical numbers about how Marty feels dejected with his underwhelming family life that feel rather superfluous to the plot, and likely didn’t need several minutes-long musical numbers to communicate.

Once Back to the Future The Musical gets going, it doesn’t stop

Alas, once Doc Brown enters the scene and Marty is shot to 1955, Back to the Future The Musical really comes alive. A big part of that comes from the excellent chemistry between Axel Duffy and Roger Bart as Marty and Doc, who clearly take a lot of cues from Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd but manage to use stage-specific skills to stand out from their cinematic counterparts.

Therein lies a bit of a paradox with Back to the Future The Musical: its devotion to the source material is both a major strength and weakness. Original screenwriter Bob Gale also wrote the book for this musical rendition delivering an adaptation that’s hardly radical but nonetheless pleasurable to watch.

Indeed, it’s the moments where the show substantially breaks from the 1985 movie’s skeleton that are some of its best. Everything with Marty’s mum Lorraine, played wonderfully by Ashleigh Rubenach, is excellent because her musical numbers make the Freudian strangeness of Back to the Future’s plot even more absurd.

Similarly, George McFly is characterised like a cartoon character by a hilarious Ethan Jones, making his lameness feel animated in a way not apparent in the film. Even meathead bully Bif gets a very theatrical upgrade while in the hands of Thomas McGuane, and Javon King steals the show on a few occasions as prospective mayor Goldie Wilson with his sensational voice.

Not a radical adaptation, but a fun one

The show doesn’t necessarily reinvent these characters, but expands upon them with mostly positive results. The music throughout is perfectly serviceable – catchy, though not super memorable – as a vehicle to transport this story from the screen to the stage, with the show often thriving most as a display of big budget stagecraft that only a film like Back to the Future could produce. The stuff they do with the DeLorean in this show is genuinely pretty nuts!

You won’t walk out of Back to the Future The Musical feeling like it reinvented the wheel (or invented time travel), but it’s still a genuinely impressive piece of theatre that shines thanks to a stellar cast, incredible production value and entertaining musical numbers that’s pretty much a must-see for diehard fans, and still well-worth the price of admission for anyone with positive feelings on the original film.

Back to the Future The Musical is playing at Sydney Lyric Theatre until January 25th.