Disney's Hercules Musical Sets West End Premiere

Disney’s animated classic Hercules is headed for the London stage.

Hercules is a musical adventure based on the 1997 Disney animated film with a score by eight-time Oscar winner Alan Menken, who added new songs for the stage, and Tony winner David Zippel and a book by Tony Award winner Robert Horn (Shucked) and Kwame Kwei-Armah (outgoing artistic director of London’s Young Vic).

A stage version has been gradually worked on for many years, with premiere productions directed by Lear deBessonet at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park and at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. This West End edition is directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw, who took over at the helm for a recent run in Hamburg, Germany. Tanisha Scott is cochoreographer.

The stage production will open in the summer of 2025 at Theatre Royal Drury Lane (currently home to Disney’s stage version of Frozen), with specific dates, details and more to be revealed in due course.

TheaterMania critic David Gordon called the Delacorte Theater production “better than Frozen and Aladdin.” You can read his full review here. Of the Paper Mill version, we said “If this production is Hercules‘ second labor, it only has 10 more to go.”