Richard Hawley’s Sheffield musical to get London run

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Hawley wrote some new songs for the show, which also uses existing material from his career

An award-winning stage show using the music of Richard Hawley and tracing life in a block of Sheffield flats is to get a run at the National Theatre.

Standing at the Sky’s Edge earned glowing reviews at the Sheffield Crucible last spring, and will transfer to the London venue in January.

Named after Hawley’s Mercury Prize-nominated 2012 album, it uses music from his solo career plus new songs.

It was named best musical production at the UK Theatre Awards in October.

Image copyright
Johan Persson

The show tells the overlapping stories of three generations of residents of a single flat in the ugly/beautiful Park Hill estate, which dominates Sheffield city centre’s skyline. It will also return to the Crucible this autumn.

It will then follow another Crucible hit to London, after Life of Pi opens in the West End in June.

Other shows in the National’s new season will include a new adaptation of Greek myth Phaedra starring Kristin Scott Thomas, and Kerry Jackson, a comedy set in a Hackney restaurant “on the front line of the gentrification wars”.

An adaptation of Andrea Levy’s novel Small Island will return following a sell-out run last year.

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