There is a distinct, low-stakes thrill to watching a new musical in its infancy. West End real estate is notoriously hard to come by, so bagging the Garrick Theatre for a single Sunday afternoon feels like a massive coup for the team. On stage, all evidence of The Producers—which owns the space the other six days of the week—is shoved behind heavy red drapes. There are no costumes, no orchestra pit, just six actors, a piano, a row of music stands, and 95 minutes to prove whether this piece has a pulse.
That’s the ultimate gamble of a staged reading, and it’s exactly why this first public outing of Raising Gays feels so electric. Before a note is even played, writer-director Micha Mirto and composer-lyricist Jordan Paul Clarke step out to remind us that this is a work-in-progress, practically begging for feedback afterwards. It’s a lovely, grounding reminder of how messy the birth of a musical usually is. Ironically, though, very little of what follows feels tentative.
Set in the Somerset town of Little Malden, the plot follows a desperate mother who brings together a makeshift group of local parents, all trying to figure out how to support their LGBTQ+ kids. On paper, it sounds simple, but the magic is in the lens. The focus is entirely on the parents, and refreshingly, the writing refuses to paint them as lazy caricatures. Mirto and Clarke are exploring that messy, complicated grey area—people who fiercely love their kids but are still tripping over the vocabulary and trying to understand them. It completely avoids the easy trap of dividing the stage into neat camps of "allies" and "bigots," giving the whole piece a beautiful sense of empathy.
It would have been so easy to write a cheaper version of this show, one where every parental blunder is played for cheap ridicule or heightened melodrama. Instead, Raising Gays lets its characters stumble, say the wrong thing, and actually grow. They feel like real people; you’ll undoubtedly spot a neighbour, a relative, or even a mirror image of yourself in that line-up.
Shifting the perspective to the parents is an inspired choice. We are finally getting a wealth of brilliant queer storytelling on stage, but we rarely look at what acceptance looks like for the families running to keep up. It doesn’t dilute the queer voices at the centre; it just widens the room. The humour hits exactly the right note, too—born out of quirky personality traits rather than forced punchlines. Just when a character starts to veer into familiar comedy-trope territory, the script pulls back the curtain to reveal a genuinely moving layer of vulnerability.
Jordan Paul Clarke’s score does a lot of the heavy lifting here. The songs don't just interrupt the scenes; they step in when the dialogue fails, exposing the raw thoughts these parents can’t quite articulate to each other. The musical styles hop around nicely, trading big, laugh-out-loud comic numbers for quiet, devastating punches to the gut that never feel emotionally manipulative.
With zero production values to hide behind, the cast carries the entire weight of the afternoon on their backs. Standing script-in-hand, backed only by Clarke at the piano, they make it look effortless. Joanna Riding, Sarah Ingram, Melanie La Barrie, Damian Humbley, Michael Matus, and Sydney Sainté don't just read the lines—they deliver fully fleshed-out human beings. It’s amazing how quickly you forget the lack of scenery when the vocal storytelling is this sharp. If a musical can hold a room captive under fluorescent work lights, the foundations are clearly rock solid.
The afternoon crowd was undeniably an easy win—the Knowing nods, shared glances, and buzzing interval chatter proved this audience desperately wanted the show to succeed. But the creators never coast on that goodwill. There are no lazy shortcuts here.
Sure, it still needs work. As with any early workshop, some of the emotional pivots need a bit more breathing room, and a few secondary relationships could do with a deeper dive in the next draft. But these are minor tweaks, not structural faults.
Judging a musical from a bare-bones reading is always a bit of a guessing game since choreography and orchestration will completely shift its DNA later on. But Raising Gays already has the ingredients that matter: a fresh premise, deeply watchable characters, and songs that actually drive the story forward. A lot of workshops leave you calculating how many years of rewriting a show needs before it’s ready for prime time. This one just makes you wonder how quickly they can find a permanent theatre for it.
By Jason Lane