Jo – The Little Women Musical, Music by Dan Redfield, World Premier Concert, one night only Drury Lane Theatre | 25 January 2026 ⭐⭐⭐ Review by William Russell

Photo credit: Roger Alarcon

Jo – The Little Women Musical

Music by Dan Redfield

Book & Lyrics by Christopher Harding & John Gabriel Koladziev based on the book by Louisa May Alcott.

World Premier Concert, one night only Drury Lane Theatre | January 25 2026

⭐⭐⭐ Review by William Russell

“Tuneful but tedious albeit well performed.”

This strongly cast concert version is the latest stage in a journey for its creators in 1996 and then after much workshopping opened in New York in the 2003/04 season with Elaine Stritch playing Aunt March. It did not work and back into a drawer it went until 2020 when they took it out and have been working on it ever since. As well as a cast of leading musical theatre players this concert version conducted by Dan Redfield had a 30 piece orchestra, an eleven strong chorus and several dancers – the problem is not Redfield's score which is tuneful even if it falls into that world of Disney where every song seems to end on a soaring never ending high note aimed straight at the middle of the Circle designed to secure an ovation. It could, however, do with a few less songs. The problem quite simply is the book. The lyrics – as is so often the case – are mostly impossible to make out. But while they touch all the points of Alcott's novel from the visit to the Hummel's , Beth and the piano, Jo's ambitions to be a writer and Amy's to get rich and escape the genteel poverty of the March household ruled over by the benign Marmee it drags relentlessly on until the interval when all that needs to be said seems to have been said – except Meg, the boring sister, getting her equally boring husband and Jo meeting Professor Behr and finding true love and a life running a school. What it needs is someone to come in and seize the musical book and work it into shape – the begetters have been at it too long and now seem to fail to see the wood for the trees. As concert versions go it has been slickly staged by Joann M Hunter and the various principals, wearing clothes for the concert stage and not of the period, do what they do well enough with Tracie Bennett enjoying herself as the tyrannical Aunt March as only she can and Kerry Ellis delivering a Queen of the West End Musical stage performance as a gloriously blonde and svelte Marmee while Christine Allado as Jo rises to the challenge of all those high notes more or less perfectly. But there are far to  many songs, the 1886 world is never conjured up in the music, although that could be said of other scores and the period of a show. But the show is still a work in progress and the way ahead needs that look at its structure as apiece of theatre. It needs to run and it limps still. The chances of seeing the concert version on stage with the resources it enjoyed are remote – they would cost too much to provide. That singing chorus and those pointless dancers for a start not to mention that size of orchestra are out of the question. The ways of telling the March girls' story vary – the film versions show it can be done and maybe the best thing they could have done would have been to look at the latest one – but equally they could have gone for the stuffed with beautiful people MGM version as well. As it is they have stuck to their own course and by the interval one begins to wonder whether one can stay the course so unending is the warbling and next to nothing of interest happening. On the plus side there is a neatly less nice than usual Laurie from Tobias Turley, a suitably ruthless Amy from Sophie Pollono, while Julian Ovenden makes a strong impression as a credible Mr March unlike the incredible Marmee conjured up by Kerry Ellis who clearly was in a world of her own.

Cast

Chrstine Allado – Jo March

Kerry Ellis – Marmee March

Tracie Bennett – Aunt March

Kelly Mathieson – Meg March

Eleabor Grant – Beth March

Sophie Pollono – Amy March

Tobias Turley – Laurie Lauurence

Chris Mann – Professor Behr

Julian Ovenden – Mr March

Liam Tanne – John Brook

Barry James – Grandfather Laurence

Miyuki Miyagi – Sallie Gardiner

Yazdan Qafouri – Fred Vaughan

Lydian Bannister, Wiiliam Boozier, Michael Li, Gabriella Tooma – Featured Ensemble.

Ton Pearce, Sarah Eyden, Joanna Forbes L'Estrange, Michael Bennison, Caroline Fitzgerald, Louise Clare Marshall, Robiun Baily, Tim Walton, Ben Goddard, Andrew Playfoot, Cameron Bernard Jones – Vocal Ensemble.

Creatives

Musical Director – Dan Redfeld

Director & Choreographer – Joann M Hunter

Lighting Design – Rory Beatos

Sound Design – Nick Pugh