It’s easy to bandy the term ‘crowd-pleaser’ around in a cosy, even vaguely euphemistic way. As if, in our current rather grim times and notoriously febrile environment for new theatre, making something that puts bums in seats and smiles on faces is somehow easy or a given.

In truth, configuring all the requisite cogs and wheels to successfully stage a new musical that has legs, laughs and audience love is no mean feat. Even quality offerings can struggle to get out of the gate (see this year’s sadly ill-fated Bonnie & Clyde tour), whilst creative duds and misfires abound.

So colour it a triumph, then, that the much-anticipated Steps musical, Here & Now, lands not only as, yes, a crowd pleaser, but indeed an unabashedly camp, glitzy, irrepressible one at that.

We’re firmly in the ‘does exactly what it says on the tin’ section of the seaside supermarket in this spritely, feel-good romp that plays out to the hits and favourites of the pop supergroup. Four best friends navigate their way through the pitfalls, hardships and romantic entanglements of their own ‘Summer of Love’ after making a sacred pineapple pact (no, that isn’t a typo or autocorrect) to chase their heart’s desires.

“Here & Now doesn’t bring anything groundbreaking or blindingly original to the stage, but nor does it profess or need to.”

Shaun Kitchener’s book is tons of fun and keeps things mostly breezy and upbeat. What drama and peril there is remains mostly fizzy and surface-level. Will ‘Better Best Bargains’ close for good? Is the waspish, French-spouting Store Manager (Finty Williams) having an extramarital affair? Will shy, artistic Neeta (Hiba Elchickhe) hold off on crafting her effigies of Alison Hammond and muster up the courage to confess her feelings to hunky Ben (Dan Partridge)? Here & Now doesn’t bring anything groundbreaking or blindingly original to the stage, but nor does it profess or need to.

What Kitchener, along with director Rachel Kavanaugh do so well here is allow the normalcy and even humdrum elements of the show’s premise to be the grounding and connective tissue for what ends up being a genuinely lovely celebration of friendship and camaraderie. The core four – Rebecca Lock’s Caz, Hiba Elchikhe’s Neeta, Sharlene Hector’s Vel and Blake Patrick Anderson’s Robbie – are a loveable, winning quartet. To single any of them out would feel remiss – they work beautifully as a foursome, are all knockout vocalists and each brings charisma, heart and humour to spare to their individual characters. The bonds feel real, the laughs (and tears) earned and the chemistry between the four leads palpable throughout. And of course, it’s all positively littered with Easter eggs and in-jokes that Steps fans will hoover up.

Perhaps most impressive though, is how remarkably organic it all feels as a piece of jukebox musical theatre. The implementation of what for many will be iconic and definitive pop hits is intuitive and, rarely for a jukebox, crafted in way that does a solid job of propelling forward the narrative and momentum. There’s a couple of numbers that feel a little clunkier and sudden in their implementing, but on the whole this is nearing Mamma Mia levels of fusion.

“…it’s all positively littered with Easter eggs and in-jokes that Steps fans will hoover up.”

Kavanaugh and Olivier-winner Matt Cole go to town on the set pieces for the big toe-tappers, such as the giddily bonkers ‘Half Price Hoedown’ of ‘5, 6, 7, 8’ and high camp dragnificence of ‘Chain Reaction’ (courtesy of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’s River Medway). Tom Rogers’ unapologetically bold, neon, oh-so-Steps staging amplifies the glam of it all considerably, with Gabriella Slade’s costumes carrying a similarly technicolor thread.

It’s busy, brassy and unapologetically played broad. But so too does Here & Now take its time to pause and invest in its more delicate beats, too. Lock’s searing, resonant takes on ‘Heartbeat’ and ‘One for Sorrow’ are not only vocally stunning, but carry a heavy emotional thwack, too. And then there’s the playful cuteness of Hector’s ‘It’s the Way You Make Me Feel’ alongside Helen Colby’s Tracey, or the giddy hijinks of ‘Say You’ll Be Mine’.

“Lock’s searing, resonant takes on ‘Heartbeat’ and ‘One for Sorrow’ are not only vocally stunning, but carry a heavy emotional thwack, too.”

With recent announcements that Birmingham will not be the end of the road for the show (a UK tour embarking from September 2025) hardly coming as a surprise, there’s a fair – and deserved – chance that we’ll be going wild in the aisles with Caz, Val, Neeta and Robbie for many more ‘Summers of Love’ to come.

Bring it on. Here & Now doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Nor does it seek to. It takes a catalogue of beloved pop hits and hands them over to a seriously impressive company and creative team who craft fabulous, funny, feel good theatre with them. By most comparable metrics in the industry, you could even make a case for saying it doesn’t have any right to be as good as it is.

It arrives as one of the freshest, funniest new musical offerings of recent memory and is – no trace of euphemism or side-eye here – an unpretentious, unapologetic crowd pleaser of the most Steptacular order.

Note: TWE reviewed  ‘Unfortunate’ earlier in its current tour. Given that this is the same touring production, what follows is a revised version of that same review, updated for its visit to the Wolverhampton Grand.

The copyright-swerving super powers of the ‘parody’ as a concept has led to it becoming quite the rage in the theatre world of late. Being able to slap on a beloved IP or iconic character without fear of the House of Mouse lawyers lining up outside the rehearsal room doors? It’s easy to see the appeal.

Yet character or brand recognition alone do not necessarily a good show make. By all means, let’s take a moment to celebrate the fact that satirists are afforded such robust legal protection in an increasingly litigious creative world, and hopefully it’ll be a good few years before AI learns the nuances of the send up, but any satire worth its sea salt has to bring more to the table than just familiarity.

Robyn Grant, Daniel Foxx and Tim Gilvin’s fringe favourite, Unfortunate is a distinctive, bold example of getting your parody down pat. It takes one of Disney’s most bombastic, fabulous villains, The Little Mermaid’s Ursula the Sea Witch, and retells the story of Mermaid from her perspective.

It’s essentially Wicked – Under the Sea edition (something its marketing freely acknowledges), and much like that canted revisit to Oz, and to a lesser extent Disney’s own Maleficent live action outings, the emphasis here is very much on setting the record straight from the villain’s perspective. Here, young Ursula (Shawna Hamic) Squirt is a feisty, gifted young witch who struggles to fit in amongst her classmates, catches the eye of a handsome young peer, and is ultimately unfairly cast out to a life of exile by a corrupt overlord who frames and shames her.

“It’s essentially Wicked – Under the Sea edition.. .and much like that canted revisit to Oz, the emphasis here is very much setting the record straight from the villain’s perspective.”

Sound familiar? The early building blocks of Unfortunate’s story certainly offer more than passing nods to Gregory Maguire and Winnie Holzman’s handling of Elphaba/The Wicked Witch of the West, but after this initial, slightly familiar, set up, Unfortunate sets sail to a gloriously bonkers retelling of Mermaid, with plenty of twists in the tale (tail?), as Ursula and her fishy friends recount how the story really went.

The broad strokes of Ursula as a woman scorned, seeking to right her wrongs may not be shatteringly original, but its execution here as a naughty, decidedly adult offering certainly brings a jolt of individuality to it all.

And beneath the outer shell of joyful, often silly smut, the reworking of the Mermaid story is deceptively quite clever, and certainly original. Reframing Ursula as essentially a contract cynic hired to inject some disillusionment and reality into air-headed young Princess Ariel (RuPaul’s Drag Race UK star River Medway) before she can take the throne is a delicious riff, and works brilliantly as a canted spin on the original film’s deal with the devil. Everything else about it is suitably dialled up to stratospheric levels of camp, including an insufferably spoilt Prince Eric (Jamie Mawson), Ursula’s alter-ego Vanessa (Julian Capolei) respawned here as a moustached, slut-dropping, straw-sucking Essex girl, and even has Ratatouille’s Colette thrown in for good measure (Allie Dart, in one of numerous roles).

The lampooning is regularly on the nose – from a decidedly non-PG rework of Ariel’s seminal ‘Part of Your World’ ballad, to an extended number about uglier denizens of the sea who ‘Didn’t Make It To Disney’. More inspired are the costume-swapping hijinks of ‘Les Poisson’, and in particular the biting commentary of ‘Ask the Girl’, which musicalises modern concerns about the original song.

“They’re fun, often bawdy takes on the original Disney offerings, and its certainly refreshing to see a parody actively engage in just that.”

They’re fun, often bawdy takes on the original Disney offerings, and its certainly refreshing to see a parody actively engage in just that. But in some ways, Unfortunate fires best when doing its own thing. It relishes in its mischief and devilment, and the flourishes of sexual tension or empowerment in numbers such as ‘Sucking on You’, ‘Female Role Models’ and ‘I’m That Witch’ are where the show really seems to find its sea legs.

This is in no small part thanks to a fierce and commanding central turn from Orange is the New Black’s Shawna Hamic, who stomps, sasses and sings up a veritable sea storm as Ursula. Bombastic, brassy and unflinching, she gives great diva and captures the cackling wickedness and malevolence of the infamous sea witch, with added splashes of punk and camp.

“Shawna Hamic… stomps, sasses and sings up a veritable sea storm as Ursula. Bombastic, brassy and unflinching, she gives great diva”

Medway is a lot of fun as a ditzy, dick-obsessed Ariel, and Allie Dart is a transformative ball of energy, hilarious and in impressive voice in a variety of turns, perhaps most notably as disillusioned chef Colette. Regularly threatening to steal the whole thing, though, is Thomas Lowe as Ursula’s one-time love, King Triton, pitched here as a sort of nepo himbo on steroids. In addition to some truly outstanding vocals throughout, Lowe is a nimble and impressive physical comedian, with an impressive and routinely hilarious grasp of character as his tortured, sensitive, often useless Triton tries to navigate his own choppy waters of emotions and regret.

Migrating from its more humble origins to the full, sizeable stage of the likes of the Wolverhampton Grand, some of Unfortunate’s fringe roots can still be seen and felt in a couple of places, but on the whole Abby Clarke’s staging work and Adam King’s lighting have been well upgraded. It still retains much of that indefinable fringe charm and edge, though a number of recurrent sound issues, and in places an overly loud mix, could do with some work.

On the whole (apologies, this show would probably much prefer on the hole…), Unfortunate is a big, bawdy sucker punch of nautical naughtiness. It’s most assuredly not one for the kids, which might feel slightly jarring given the source material. Indeed, for some it may be even a little too crass.

But for everyone else, the frequent filthiness, and regular talk of suckers, sluttiness and semen (no typo there) are all part of an unashamedly naughty, unapologetically empowering middle finger to Disneyfied pleasantry and sensibilities. And a firm, ripe, juicy cherry on top of what is, yes, a deceptively well-conceived parody, after all.

The copyright-swerving super powers of the ‘parody’ as a concept has led to it becoming quite the rage in the theatre world of late. Being able to slap on a beloved IP or iconic character without fear of the House of Mouse lawyers lining up outside the rehearsal room doors? It’s easy to see the appeal.

Yet character or brand recognition alone do not necessarily a good show make. By all means, let’s take a moment to celebrate the fact that satirists are afforded such robust legal protection in an increasingly litigious creative world, and hopefully it’ll be a good few years before AI learns the nuances of the send up, but any satire worth its sea salt has to bring more to the table than just familiarity.

Robyn Grant, Daniel Foxx and Tim Gilvin’s fringe favourite, Unfortunate is a distinctive, bold example of getting your parody down pat. It takes one of Disney’s most bombastic, fabulous villains, The Little Mermaid’s Ursula the Sea Witch, and retells the story of Mermaid from her perspective.

It’s essentially Wicked – Under the Sea edition (something its marketing freely acknowledges), and much like that canted revisit to Oz, and to a lesser extent Disney’s own Maleficent live action outings, the emphasis here is very much on setting the record straight from the villain’s perspective. Here, young Ursula (Shawna Hamic) Squirt is a feisty, gifted young witch who struggles to fit in amongst her classmates, catches the eye of a handsome young peer, and is ultimately unfairly cast out to a life of exile by a corrupt overlord who frames and shames her.

“It’s essentially Wicked – Under the Sea edition.. .and much like that canted revisit to Oz, the emphasis here is very much setting the record straight from the villain’s perspective.”

Sound familiar? The early building blocks of Unfortunate’s story certainly offer more than passing nods to Gregory Maguire and Winnie Holzman’s handling of Elphaba/The Wicked Witch of the West, but after this initial, slightly familiar, set up, Unfortunate sets sail to a gloriously bonkers retelling of Mermaid, with plenty of twists in the tale (tail?), as Ursula and her fishy friends recount how the story really went.

The broad strokes of Ursula as a woman scorned, seeking to right her wrongs may not be shatteringly original, but its execution here as a naughty, decidedly adult offering certainly brings a jolt of individuality to it all.

And beneath the outer shell of joyful, often silly smut, the reworking of the Mermaid story is deceptively quite clever, and certainly original. Reframing Ursula as essentially a contract cynic hired to inject some disillusionment and reality into air-headed young Princess Ariel (RuPaul’s Drag Race UK star River Medway) before she can take the throne is a delicious riff, and works brilliantly as a canted spin on the original film’s deal with the devil. Everything else about it is suitably dialled up to stratospheric levels of camp, including an insufferably spoilt Prince Eric (Jamie Mawson), Ursula’s alter-ego Vanessa (Julian Capolei) respawned here as a moustached, slut-dropping, straw-sucking Essex girl, and even has Ratatouille’s Colette thrown in for good measure (Allie Dart, in one of numerous roles).

The lampooning is regularly on the nose – from a decidedly non-PG rework of Ariel’s seminal ‘Part of Your World’ ballad, to an extended number about uglier denizens of the sea who ‘Didn’t Make It To Disney’. More inspired are the costume-swapping hijinks of ‘Les Poisson’, and in particular the biting commentary of ‘Ask the Girl’, which musicalises modern concerns about the original song.

“They’re fun, often bawdy takes on the original Disney offerings, and its certainly refreshing to see a parody actively engage in just that.”

They’re fun, often bawdy takes on the original Disney offerings, and its certainly refreshing to see a parody actively engage in just that. But in some ways, Unfortunate fires best when doing its own thing. It relishes in its mischief and devilment, and the flourishes of sexual tension or empowerment in numbers such as ‘Sucking on You’, ‘Female Role Models’ and ‘I’m That Witch’ are where the show really seems to find its sea legs.

This is in no small part thanks to a fierce and commanding central turn from Orange is the New Black’s Shawna Hamic, who stomps, sasses and sings up a veritable sea storm as Ursula. Bombastic, brassy and unflinching, she gives great diva and captures the cackling wickedness and malevolence of the infamous sea witch, with added splashes of punk and camp.

“Shawna Hamic… stomps, sasses and sings up a veritable sea storm as Ursula. Bombastic, brassy and unflinching, she gives great diva”

Medway is a lot of fun as a ditzy, dick-obsessed Ariel, and Allie Dart is a transformative ball of energy, hilarious and in impressive voice in a variety of turns, perhaps most notably as disillusioned chef Colette. Regularly threatening to steal the whole thing, though, is Thomas Lowe as Ursula’s one-time love, King Triton, pitched here as a sort of nepo himbo on steroids. In addition to some truly outstanding vocals throughout, Lowe is a nimble and impressive physical comedian, with an impressive and routinely hilarious grasp of character as his tortured, sensitive, often useless Triton tries to navigate his own choppy waters of emotions and regret.

Migrating from its more humble origins to the full, sizeable stage of Birmingham’s Hippodrome theatre and others (Midlanders should take note that the show also comes to the Wolverhampton Grand this July), some of Unfortunate’s fringe roots can still be seen and felt in a couple of places, but on the whole Abby Clarke’s staging work and Adam King’s lighting have been well upgraded. It still retains much of that indefinable fringe charm and edge, though a number of recurrent sound issues, and in places an overly loud mix, could do with some work.

On the whole (apologies, this show would probably much prefer on the hole…), Unfortunate is a big, bawdy sucker punch of nautical naughtiness. It’s most assuredly not one for the kids, which might feel slightly jarring given the source material. Indeed, for some it may be even a little too crass.

But for everyone else, the frequent filthiness, and regular talk of suckers, sluttiness and semen (no typo there) are all part of an unashamedly naughty, unapologetically empowering middle finger to Disneyfied pleasantry and sensibilities. And a firm, ripe, juicy cherry on top of what is, yes, a deceptively well-conceived parody, after all.