Disney’s Hercules, a musical tale of ancient gods and Greeks, is not (as Phil would say) a work of heart. It is running in London until September 5, 2026.

Synopsis:

In ancient Greece, Hercules is the son of Zeus and Hera. He is made nearly mortal by his uncle Hades, who rules the underworld. After discovering a prophecy that Hercules will stop Hades from claiming Mount Olympus as his own, Hades sets out to stop him. Hercules, to regain his godhood, must do something no god has ever done. So Hercules sets out with his trainer Phil to become a mighty hero and claim his rightful place by his parents’ side.

Hercules Review

Full disclosure: This show opened in summer 2025. Our writer visited this week in May 2026. While the show’s time in London will come to an end soon, this show will most likely have a life somewhere, whether a long-standing production in one spot, a tour, or regional products. Which is why it felt pertinent to review it.

Before really diving in, we need to make one thing abundantly clear: the Muses are the show. Without them, this musical as a whole is irredeemably disappointing. Looking back, it makes sense that they are the focal point of every marketing campaign. Leslie Beehann, Candace Furbert, Sharlene Hector, Brianna Ogunbawo, and Robyn Rose-Li hold this entire production on their shoulders. Each moment they take the stage, the theater comes to life. Their incandescent voices bring goosebumps with every note—and that’s the gospel truth.

Otherwise, contrary to the show’s tagline, Hercules at Theatre Royal Drury Lane is not, in fact, “electrifying.” The show, a musical based on the 1997 Disney film of the same name, is more like a British panto than a typical Disney Broadway performance. Instead of the characters movie fans already know, audiences see rigid, one-dimensional character archetypes. Hades is no longer the nuanced, witty, interesting villain he was in the film. Instead, he is a painfully over-the-top try-hard who literally calls himself the bad guy on multiple occasions. Book writers Robert Horn and Kwame Kwei-Armah took the character fans love and stripped him of all his personality in the ham-handed overwriting. Hades is not the only victim of this; it is a show-wide phenomenon.

This is in no way a dismissal of Stephen Carlile’s performance as Hades. He does so much with the very little he is given, as do many of the other actors, like Trevor Dion Nicholas as Phil or Mae Ann Jorolan as Meg. You can tell from the jump that Carlile played Scar in Disney’s The Lion King on Broadway without looking at his bio simply from the mannerisms and gravitas he brings to Hades. However, this direction from Casey Nicholaw feels deeply out of place and out of character. Disney villains are often great fun because of their variations; it’s wrong to reduce them to a single note.

Hades is not a panto-level villain. None of the characters in Hercules is simply one-dimensional in any regard. Yet, somehow, this show makes every one of them into a stock persona devoid of real interest, charisma, or genuine authenticity. Even Hercules himself is written like a dopey frat boy whose character development journey is a straight line. Sisiphus would be jealous.

Frankly, Hades in this version looks and acts like Martin Short’s Jack Frost in Santa Clause 3. This comparison is not helped by the fact that Zeus’ costume makes him look like a Greek mall Santa. Not to mention that characters later in the show (Bob and Charles, who are supposed to be Pain and Panic) make mention of an “escape clause”—which is literally the name of the third Santa Clause movie.

By the same token, why are Pain and Panic now named Bob and Charles? In a cast of characters whose names are derived from Greek mythology, this rewrite is unnecessarily bland. They were still Pain and Panic in the Paper Mill Playhouse production of this show, circa 2023. Why change that now? It purposelessly yanks the audience directly out of the world created by the show. It doesn’t need cheap laughs to be funny. The film didn’t need that, and this show doesn’t either.

The problem is, the new songs (and most of the adjustments to the originals) have the same problem. Songs within this musical are so wildly disjointed that it’s hard to believe they were written by the same duo who wrote the originals. Slant rhymes and witticisms are nowhere to be found. This seems impossible, as Alan Menken and David Zippel’s work from the film has some of my favorite lines and melodies in Disney:

• “Before that blasted Underworld gets my goat” – “One Last Hope”
• “But thought the dead/were dull and uncouth/He was as mean as he was ruthless/And that’s the gospel truthh” – “Gospel Truth”

These are just two examples of great lines from the original songs that no longer exist in this iteration. Instead of clever double entendres, audiences are left with half-hearted rhyme schemes and modern slang that will age this musical like milk. Even with the changes, the original songs are still (by far) the strongest elements of this show. So much so that the new songs don’t even musically feel like they belong in the same echelon as the rest.

As someone who sees a lot of theater, even well into their runs, there was also something else about this production that really troubled me: the sightlines. It’s unclear to me if this has been a problem for the entire run or simply an effect on the show several months in. It may have been an issue the entire time, but critics who are comped are often seated in the center section and would not have seen them. I, however, purchased a ticket and therefore was seated on the house’s right side of the audience and, on multiple occasions, could see actors waiting to enter the stage for minutes at a time. Whether perched behind set pieces or waiting in the wings, it was frustrating to be able to see them. Sightlines matter. If I could see them, that means the entire right half of the audience could see them, too. When one of the characters is just moving their legs around behind a set piece, and you can see it, there’s a good chance you aren’t paying attention to what’s happening on stage. Given the number of audience members near me who pointed at the stage and whispered to their companions, these moments were clearly a problem.

But, honestly, those poorly executed sightlines were a kind of disheartening metaphor for the show as a whole. It’s lazy. Stacked up against the other Disney musicals, or even the original film itself, this production lacks heart. No amount of cheesy projection backgrounds or moving columns could give this show the Disney magic you’d expect. In fact, I would believe you if you told me Disney had nothing to do with this.

Hercules is loud. It’s flashy. It’s all spectacle and no substance. The writing sucked the soul out of this story. As a lifelong proponent of Disney musicals, a forever fan of Hercules (1997), and an avid musical theater nerd, this show honestly broke my heart.

Rating out of 7: 2

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