Everybody's Talking About Jamie - Sheffield Crucible/Apollo

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is a wonderful wonderful wonderful piece of work, an absolute celebration of all its characters from sensitively putting its bullies in their place, to true family, to making Jamie the superstar he really is. It’s also the best British Musical since The Grinning Man Girl from the North Country The Clockmaker’s Daughter American Psycho London Road Matilda OK actually the British musical is in pretty rude health but Jamie is bloody wonderful – and the best musical about being British I think I’ve ever seen. Definitely the best mainstream British musical in yonks, mind (since Made in Dagenham?), and that’s worth celebrating. Saw this at a cinema abroad and the experience of sharing this celebration of Britain’s tolerance and wit and working-class life with the world was one I’ll treasure.

There are two things I particularly loved about this. The first is its rounding out of its main character, and willingness to make him even, occasionally, a wee bit annoying – bit of an ego, bit of a show-off – and DEFINITELY teenage, whilst also celebrating him totally – makes him more angsty, more real, more loveable. It doesn’t wear its politics on its sleeve, though I’d argue it’s quite political – it just uses them as background to Jamie’s life. Its closest precedent is Billy Elliot, obvs, which also keep class a background element but an all-important one, makes society its villain and not people, and celebrates being yourself – but Gillespie-Sell’s musical style is far more unique and developed, and represents Jamie and Jamie’s school better than John’s music does Billy and his family. On paper there’s not much to the plot, so it relies on characters alone – and what great characters Margaret, Pritti and Jamie are!

Personally, I also think it’s fab to have a musical so celebrate the English school – full of the high melodrama teenagers make of everything. You can tell the people making this know modern schools well and feel that awful nostalgia for those idiotic years (although is ‘minger’ still an insult? I swear that was old when I was at school). Especially, the last musical I saw set in an English school wasn’t Everybody’s Talking About Jamie but everyone loves Charlie everyone loves Charlie everyone loves Charlie everyone loves Charlie everyone loves Charlie everyone loves Charlie everyone loves Charlie everyone loves Charlie.

But this is symptomatic of why the show works – it’s immersed in its characters’ lives, in their reality. For a real boy in Jamie’s (fabulous) shoes, school won’t be cliquey but familiar, home is comforting, and attitudes the problem. Jamie’s mum’s songs had a lovely different calibre, a little bit Carpenters, as if songs from her musical not his, and this style vs the more pulsing younger songs shows how deeply Gillespie-Sells cares about reflecting the reality of these characters – slightly wistful for her, but the teenage songs have teenage energy, passion, optimism and full steam ahead. Because of this sensitivity and exuberance of ESPECIALLY the wonderful lead actor, the minor issues are papered over (couple of scenes too long/repetitive, older drag queens didn’t quite ring true, not quite enough plot for two hours thirty), and whilst Margaret’s songs are unlistenably poignant (I cannot get to the end of My Man Your Boy in one piece), for the most part you feel like the best parts of being a teenager again.

But what I really loved most about this was the absence of an ‘antagonist’ per se – a boo-hiss baddie to make life simple. Yes there were the bullies, the teacher, the father, but who had the big villain song? There wasn’t one. What made this richer and truer was that, instead, the ‘antagonist’ was the ease with which homophobic opinions could be spoken and shared and accepted, divided amongst everyone but just there in this society. Dramatically, having villains as ciphers for the hate is easy, but unrealistic – having everyone from bullies to strangers to teachers to family expressing bigotry, and Jamie’s subsequent own self-doubt, all mean that at the end the ‘antagonist’ (normalised homophobia and bigotry) is far from beaten, but the battle is totally won. "Out Of The Darkness" is such a great song.

Jamie takes a documentary which celebrates English school and northern culture and the freedom to be yourself, and doesn’t soften the hard edges, but changes them into something more mainstream and sing-a-long-able – it’s a great celebration of being gay, of being yourself, of standing up to those who aren’t willing or able to love you, and of being in a loving family and making family yourself. A bit like the hugely underrated mini-masterpiece Mermaid a few years ago, this spoke up to teenagers not down, elevated teenage hormonal melodrama into high drama and high art. Especially, of course, because of the brilliant brilliant brilliant John Mcrae who – God love Hamilton – was robbed at the Oliviers. It’s a celebration of just how to be a teenager, and the most fabulous teenager you can be.