Redcliffe - Southwark Playhouse Borough: All the makings of a modern classic

⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑ - 91% • 4 minutes 45 seconds read time

In February 2024, I sat in The Turbine Theatre and watched a presentation of Act 1 of a new musical during MTFestUK. “This is going to blow people away one day” I thought, about 35 minutes in.

A few months later, I sat in The Other Palace Studio and watched a workshop of both acts of a new musical. “This is really very special, audiences are going to love this one day” I thought.

Cut to now, and Redcliffe is making its world premiere at Southwark Playhouse Borough, and one day is today, and it’s everything I knew it would be and somehow even more.

Redcliffe is an imagined story based on true events that took place in the town of Redcliffe, Bristol 274 years ago. In 1752, two men fell in love. In 1753, they were killed for it.

All we know as fact is that William Critchard and Richard Arnold met, were seen together one night, and then were put to death for it. Around those facts, Jordan Luke Gage has built a rich and textured story of love, loss, family, fragility, religious trauma and inexplicably, hope.

Writing a musical is always hard, and presenting work to an audience is always brave, but it’s fair to say that there was an added challenge for Jordan - in a world of who you know, there’s an added pressure to prove he’s earned this coveted space in a theatres programming, not just benefitted from some sort of industry nepotism.

I think the work more than speaks for itself. It has all the makings of a modern classic. A period piece that feels timeless, music that sounds like it could have been lifted from a musical 50 years ago yet is still current and exciting, characters that are well rounded, deep and charismatic, and crucially mountains of heart. It’s a testament to people writing what they love - Jordan loves theatre, he loves stories and it shows. There are nods to classic musicals like Parade, modern musicals like Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, and inspiration drawn from iconic cinema characters like Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka. And yet it’s still entirely his own.

Watching this piece made me understand how classical music is composed. A central element that is explored through sound. This musical is water. It’s fluid and flowing rivers, crashing and whirling raging storms, the calm in the eye of a hurricane.

William is a delightful change of pace from the characters we are used to seeing Jordan play - usually a bit of a bad boy, or a lothario, it’s fantastic to see him take on a character that’s far softer. He is a reflecting pool, iridescent as the light hits it, deeper than people realise and a product of what’s around it. Introspective, beautiful, but what it presents to the world isn’t what it actually is. Jordan captures all of those complexities, the delicate strength of William, the rage that burns when you can’t just be, the fight to keep up appearances for those he loves. He’s given some beautiful performances over the years, but William is for me the first time I’ve gotten to see Jordan really show all he can do as an actor.

And Richard, he is the sea just before a storm. Choppy, unpredictable, hard to look away from because you don’t know what it will be when you look back. Dan Krikler is perfect casting. I don’t quite know how to explain why Dan’s acting is so magnetic for me, it almost feels like every job he takes on is his first one. By that I mean, there’s an authenticity and truthfulness to how he lives in a character, that often actors lose the more jobs they do, the more training they’ve done. They get wrapped up in the process and lose a little bit of the spark. Dan is all spark, and he is constantly surprising, you think you know where a character is going to go next and he subverts that - which is exactly what Richard needs. And it helps, given this is a musical, that he can sing beautifully, blending perfectly with Jordan.

I have a slight Catch 22 situation with this show because I think it can, and hope it does, have a life where it comes into town and runs for a good while, becoming a fixture with many casts coming and taking their turn telling the story. The Catch 22 of it is that I can’t imagine it without Rebecca Lock. In the role of Mother she is the beating heart of the show, the comedic backbone - this is a heavy subject matter, you categorically will cry, but it never actually feels too heavy to carry largely because of how magnificent Becky Lock’s emotional navigation is. What’s really wonderful to see, is how a seasoned professional like Becky is met in this piece by a new talent - Jess Douglas-Welsh. In her professional debut, she is able to go toe to toe with Lock and never falters, matches her at each emotional beat. If this is what she can do in her very first stage job, we all should be very excited about what her future will look like.

What’s clear about this production is that everyone involved has fully understood Jordan’s vision, the direction from Paul Foster in combination with the choreography by Emma Woods really creates this feeling of submersion. Like a wave washes over you, and you’re swept along in tide, spun around in this dream like state before being thrown violently back onto shore.

We live in difficult times. Over 60 countries around the world still criminalise same sex relationships, in 12 it’s still punishable by death. Right now in the UK we’re seeing another demographic of the LGBT community demonised and scapegoated, their right to a safe existence under threat as the government takes rights away from trans people every day. What Redcliffe does beautifully is highlight just how violent these policies are. Just how nonsensical it is to think the “right” stance is ever one that causes harm to people for who they are and who they love. And how in all the noise, all the chaos of the hurricane, at the very eye of that are people just trying to be.

It’s not a 100% production yet - but for me all of what it can gain is in the production value, which will come with scale and resources. As far as the content goes, the performances, the meat of the show - it has it all and then some.

I read a saying many years ago. “A person has two deaths. The first when they take their final breath, the second the last time someone says their name.” William Critchard and Richard Arnold faced their first death for the crime of being in love. Isn’t it rather beautiful then, that because of that love, for 2 hours every night, we get to prolong the second?

Redcliffe runs at Southwark Playhouse Borough until July 4th. I implore you - get a ticket.