By Aline Mahrud

WORTH A LOOK?: *****

WHEN?: Saturday 17 February (matinee), opens Wednesday 28 February and runs through 3 August 2024 RUNTIME: 170 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)

As we write, Labour appears on the cusp of reclaiming power in the UK for the 1st time in 14 years and we suspect those characters onstage in Richard Hawley’s Standing On The Sky’s Edge would be pleased.

• Read on for reasons including why Standing At The Sky’s Edge is the West End’s biggest weepie

For the uninitiated, this Olivier-winning musical is about 3 families living on Sheffield’s Park Hill estate over 60 years and pivots around Conservative election victories for Thatcher, Major and Johnson with the sense that the results brought little benefit to the residents of the steel city.

We reviewed it a year ago when it was on a limited run at the National Theatre and this is its West End transfer following 2 Olivier wins (Best New Musical and Best Original Score) and losing its 2 Olivier-nominated stars Faith Omole (currently in King Lear at the Almeida) and Maimuna Memon (Manic Street Creature, Southwark Playhouse).

The Gillian Lynne Theatre is as brutalist in its exterior as the National and the Park Hill estate and feels a suitable setting for a musical of which we said: ‘Standing At The Sky’s Edge has a real sense of place but also offers much thought about the nature of home and how ‘it’s not a place, it’s the people you find and take with you’ and ‘until you let someone else in, it’s just a box to keep out the rain’.’

It’s also capable of conveying the sheer size of a concrete high-rise estate which inspires both devotion and resentment and that feeling that the musical’s title is seeking to explain with the production’s band being housed onstage in the upper floors looking out across England’s 4th biggest city.

Laura Pitt-Pulford (Falsettos, Other Palace) joins the cast as Poppy replacing Alex Young (also at the Almeida recently in Cold War) and brings warmth to a role which can occasionally come across as unnecessarily harsh.

Lauryn Redding replaces Memon as Nikki and brings a powerhouse vocal unusual in one so young. Joel Harper-Jackson (COCK, Ambassadors, pictured above) replaces Robert Lonsdale as Harry and made us sympathise with his difficult character while also convincing as a young man in love.

Elizabeth Ayodele replaces Omole as Joy (pictured centre far below) and this is a role for us pivotal to the show’s success. She plays a Liberian refugee who is rescued from an estate bully by the brilliant Samuel Jordan as Jimmy and it is this love story and how she saves him that is very much the show’s beating heart.

Listening to the show’s soundtrack and their most devastating dialogue forms part of song For Your Lover Give Some Time but it is Rachael Wooding’s After the Rain which, again, is the show’s stand-out number again here.

We would say the West End transfer of this production has given it a glow-up and, despite losing some of the most celebrated members of its cast, the changes bring something new and fresh and in no way detract from the entertainment on offer.

Most importantly, Chris Bush’s beautifully written book complements the humanity of Richard Hawley’s songs and Standing At The Sky’s Edge is the biggest weepie in the West End that will make you think, shed a tear and tap a foot – perhaps simultaneously.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Sky’s Edge Musical
• Have you seen Standing At The Sky’s Edge before and are what did you think of this? Tickets
• Let us know what you thought in the comments below
• Enjoyed this review? Follow monstagigz on Twitter @NeilDurham, email neildurham3@gmail.com and check us out on Instagram and Facebook