#hercules west end

[pickypickypeak]

me waiting for the west end hercules musical cast recording

[tellmemoretellmemorepodcast]

Obsessions EP89: Hairspray (2007)

This is a page dedicated to documenting the various theatre news, performances and the like that Lia and Odiesia mention in the “Obsessions” segment of the show. Listen to this episode here. You can also find our fave songs playlist here.

Lia

Moana 2 out this year

The Interestings musical adaptation in works with Sara Bareilles & Sarah Ruhl

Build Up: Korean Vocal Boy Group Survival Show (live with english subtitles every thursday @ 10:40 KST on MNET youtube channel)

Odiesia

‘Wait for Me (Reprise)’ from Hadestown for the Big Night of Musicals 2024

Extra Obsession

Zero to Hero from Hercules for the Royal Variety Performance

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Shoutout (not in episode post-show finds):

The White Gaze of Hairspray by Yhara Zayd

Ricki Lake and John Waters Look Back on 'Hairspray,' 'Cry-Baby' and More on TheWrap

[littleeliza-lotte]

Hercules first preview audio recording (06-06-25)

*PLEASE DO NOT SHARE OUTSIDE OF TUMBLR WITHOUT PERMISSION*

[alittlebitbethany]

I had a lovely time seeing Hercules the Musical with my dad yesterday here’s a photo of my Disney ILY4EVER doll Amanda and I at the theatre. Amanda is cosplaying Meg. Image Description: a photo of a young woman standing in front of a screen with an ancient Greek vase on it with the title Hercules on it. The young woman is holding a doll who is wearing a purple Ancient Greek dress.

[pinbitch]

no thoughts head empty just the absolute delirium of the the costume design of disney’s hercules on the west end

[insecuregodcomplex]

if i had a nickel for each west end musical i would love to see live but am happy for any uhh other ways to watch which feature Trevor Dion Nicholas I’d have two nickels

[arthurmorganson]

HERCULES STAGE MUSICAL JUNE 2025????? i literally manifested this

[thedisneybarbie]

The cast of the new Hercules musical on Britains got talent immediately making me so happy 😍 oh how I would LOVE to see that show!

[nerdiertides]

The Muses from Disney's New 'Hercules' Stage Musical Perform "Zero to Hero" in live-action music video

(Featured Image Source: © Disney ) A West End production of Disney’s Hercules will premiere this June. To celebrate, Disney is giving fans a sneak peek with a live-action music video featuring the production’s Muses performing the song “Zero to Hero.” “The muses from the West End production of Disney’s Hercules, the electrifying new musical, belt out ‘Zero to Hero’ in a brand new music…

[chorus-box]

Big Night of Musicals 2025: What We Know so Far

Mark your calendar for The National Lottery’s “Big Night of Musicals” for the third year running! Dear Evan Hansen UK Tour. Photo Credit: Marc Brenner This year’s musical-packed lineup features songs from Dear Evan Hansen, Bat Out of Hell, Calamity Jane (Carrie Hope Fletcher fans unite!), Hear and Now—The Official Steps Musical, Disney’s Hercules, and Mean Girls. And there are even more shows…

[melanatedmedia2]

Get ready to experience the power of the gods as Hercules: The Musical debuts in London's West End – don't miss this epic journey! #Hercules #BroadwayMusical #D23 #Summer2025

[dcdreamblog]

What’s the oldest record you’ve come across of an individual who resembles what we might call a superhero today?

"Hey Sid, how about you put your foot directly into the biggest minefield in your profession so that no matter what you say one of your colleagues WILL have you assassinated?" Oh boy! How could I resist?!

This post is going to be more qualifier than answer but here we go.

The definition of "superhero" is famously squirrely. We only CALL them superheroes in common language because of Superman's appearance kicking off the current heroic age. In the 40s they were called mystery men, there were heroes like them among the lawmen of the American west, the Revolutionary war, the vikings, the knights of Camelot and ALL of those examples are just those who fit my personal working definition of a superhero which is someone holding 3 distinct aspects.

Has powers, abilities or skill sets outside those of the normal population for their nation, class and time period

Uses an identity, costume or motif separate from their 'legal' identity

Uses said powers and secondary identity to confront crime or injustice within their society and correct it.

You'll note that that 2nd reason is, for instance, why mythological figures like Perseus and Hercules don't count. While they had skills and abilities beyond mortal ken, they did so under their own pedigrees so to speak. Reasons 1 and 3 disqualify many historically attested classes of masked soldiery or specially named military units who had the abilities expected of them for high level military men AND acted upon the orders of military superiors.

Every single word of these explanations and definitions can be torn apart by the edge cases. This has to be accepted, there is no universal definition of "superhero" that includes everyone you think counts and excludes everyone you think doesn't. Nature of the game.

ALL of that being said, here's my pick.

(Reconstruction of a marble carved mural from within the villa of the 'Golden Gladiator') Marcus Tiberius (unknown if that was his birth name but unlikely considering how Romans regularly changed their names or the emphasis on their names in relation to societal rank) was a common shepherd living near the city of Segusio (modern day Susa, Italy) whose first appearance in the historical record is being convicted of a crime. Accused of attempting to assassinate Praetor Clodius Crassus, Marcus was indentured to slave galley. Eventually saving the life of the ship's captain when a lion being transported to Rome for the gladiatorial games escaped on board, Marcus himself was recommended for the games.

Now in close proximity to Cinna, the centurion who had actually attempted to assassinate the Praetor, Marcus overcame purposefully rigged challenges against much stronger opponents, defeating a raging bull with a faulty spear and a chariot race against one of Cinna's allies earning his freedom and the lifelong moniker that's most easily translated as: The Golden Gladiator.

The Golden Gladiator would spend the next decades of his life doing everything in his power to foil Cinna's plots for power, even falling in love with and marrying Cinna's niece Lucia in the same year Cinna was recognized as having framed Marcus all those years ago. He served as a close advisor to Emperor Vespasian for many years, being made bodyguard of his son Titus where he eventually perished guarding him from an assassination attempt in 73 AD

This is by no means a perfect answer. Considering the things Vespasian and Titus are actually RESPONSIBLE for even as two of the "good emperors", and Marcus was by no means so hero outside his own moral time and place calling for the liberation of slaves and the end of imperialism, obviously. There's a reason we start the moral and spiritual continuity of our modern heroic legacy at the Crimson Avenger and don't try to tie them back much further than that so we can stay out of the moral thickets that inevitably come from examining the actions of any human being who lived before the previous century at best. But he DID use an assumed persona to fight against criminality and corruption within his society so as far as that goes, that's the hand I've got to play. Now I get to post this and wait for some really STIMULATING emails and voice messages from people I went to college with!

[iconuk01]

Meet the Muses from the upcoming West End stage version of Disney's Hercules.

"Zero to Hero" is an amazing song and these ladies do it ALL the justice!

[littleeliza-lotte]

West End Live 2025!

I’ve been going to WEL since 2021, and it’s crazy to see how it’s grown, but honestly it has gotten very chaotic. It’s such a great concept to showcase musicals for free, but in the last few years it’s gotten more and more popular, while I think trafalagr is a great location since it’s closer to the theatres, it gets packed so easily and they clearly don’t know how to organize that properly, especially in the queues. People will wait all night, I arrived at 6:50 and though I did get a good spot and a good view, people had been there since 2 AM, which is crazy to do in the middle of London. They need to have a specific time where people can queue from to keep from this or else it’s going to get crazier and crazier each year. And I am unsure how practical this would be, but it would be great if there was some form of cover, we were absolutely roasting yesterday and everyone’s phones kept overheating, which is something I’ve literally never had happen even when I lived in Florida.

They also started letting us in late, last year we began to be let in at 9:55, this year we got let in at 10:45.

Security was stricter this year though, within the barriers no one was allowed to cut in line, you could leave and come back, but not cut in without having been there before. Last year I had a friend literally jump the barriers to join someone and they didn’t care, so it’s interesting to see how they changed.

I’ve seen people say they should move it to Hyde park, which would be good for capacity but not as good for the performers, many of them have matinee shows to get to, and some are in costume, I walked back with the Les mis cast yesterday and they were all stressing walking back because they had less than an hour to get back to the theatre, reset their costumes/ wigs and cool down before the show, they don’t have time to travel from Hyde Park back into their theatre. Trafalagr is a great spot for the performers to be able to get to and from their theatres, though some are further away, in general, it’s a good place to be, but it just needs more organizing and maybe even a cut off for the queue because it isn’t fair for people to wait for ages only to be told they can’t go in/ will have to wait for people to leave to go inside.

Long story short, WEL is a great concept and a great way to share theatre and to be able to sing along to your favorite songs in a concert like way, but it’s gotten way bigger in the last few years and needs some more control.

[poirott]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AGATHA CHRISTIE! (b. September 15 1890)

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End of London since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime"—a moniker which is now trademarked by her estate—or the "Queen of Mystery". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.

[genericpuff]

I’m gonna have to disagree with you that Kaos is any better than LO. It’s all the same bull crap.

Kaos just seems like live-action LO, both having a boring storyline with bad or fetishized characterizations of the Greek Gods and figures, and both looking artistically beautiful and some cool concepts, but badly executed. The only difference is that Kaos has more LGBTQIA+ themes than LO, has a tiny bit more Greek references, and gets much darker. That’s pretty much it.

As a Greek who studies our myths and stories extensively, I’m tired of the west trying to take and rearrange our stories and retell them ‘with a modern, western lense’. It’s exhausting and infuriating.

It’s time the west gets over its fascination with us and move on.

Fair opinion! Honestly, the initial post I made about it was after only watching the first couple episodes. Now that I've finished it, I can definitely see actual glaring issues with it, both in their characterizations as well as in how they kind of lose the intrigue after a few episodes of the setting and elements of them being gods. Which are all issues that LO have as well.

Though I will say, LO has those issues far more than Kaos does, but what really separates LO from Kaos, in my opinion - the creators of Kaos aren't pretending that Kaos is more than it is. To me, Kaos isn't in any way a singular Greek myth retelling, more so a fun "Greek epic" style story featuring the gods in a modern setting, the way LO could have been if Rachel hadn't tried to make it into something bigger than it was (and if she didn't put herself on a pedestal as a "self proclaimed folklorist"). I can watch Kaos and appreciate it as a fun Greek myth inspired piece of media because that's pretty much all it's trying to be. Meanwhile LO gives us middle-school-level writing with very little real Greek myth influence (aside from what it benefits Rachel to do so) that even goes so far as to outright disrespect the myths that they were based on... all the while people praise it as the greatest Greek myth retelling ever.

I think Kaos is miles better than LO because it at least tells a more coherent story than LO ever could have, with a lot more attention paid to the stylization of a Greek epic (compared to LO which tried and failed to implement those same things, such as the Fates, self-fulfilling prophecies, and witty narration as to retell a story that's already happened).

Granted, that story still takes a lot of liberties with the source material (some that I enjoyed, others not so much), but in that regard, I refer to the above - Kaos isn't trying to be an actual retelling like LO did, so I view it the same way I do as something like Hercules or Hades, where the people who made it clearly love Greek myth and wanted to do some Greek myth-inspired story with their own twists on the narratives, and it paid off in a story that, in spite of their flaws, still feels intentional and thought out.

LO, by comparison, is just a mess of ripped off half-baked ideas thrown at a wall and filled in with self-fulfilling power fantasy garbage written by someone who claims to have deeper knowledge of the myths but clearly doesn't. It's hard to enjoy LO in spite of its flaws because it's all flaws and they're so deeply-rooted in the context of Rachel's own biases and sexual preferences that you really can't separate it from that once you know if it.

I do have some criticisms of Kaos and some of its more creative choices - Hera cheating on Zeus with Poseidon (literally wtf lmao), Persephone still being the "I went down there willingly!" archetype (though at least she's not 19 in this, the casting for her and Hades was great), as well as the fact that things weren't wrapped up by the end of the first season which really bums me out because now it's up to the mercy of Netflix to give it that second season - but ultimately, from a story-writing perspective, Kaos absolutely did accomplish having an actual narrative with themes and goal-driven writing that LO failed in having. That comparison doesn't make Kaos a 100% perfect show without flaw, but I made the comparison initially anyways because much of what I enjoyed in Kaos was what I expected from LO (and ultimately didn't get).

That's just my own two cents though! And I need to make it clear - I am not a Greek person! I have no say or merit within the discussion regarding Greek myth and how it's been appropriated!! - so ultimately... my opinion of these things really aren't as valuable as someone who actually is Greek or studied heavily in it.

So that said, I can completely see the merit in your own arguments that a lot of these "modern retellings" tend to miss the point of the stories they're trying to retell (esp with the criticisms I outlined above) and are often chewed up through a Western lens. The lesser of two evils is still evil. But if we're purely talking Kaos vs. Lore Olympus here as modern entertainment that are both attempting similar things... I'd be way more likely to rewatch and recommend one over the other. Plus there are a lot of adaptions out there made by Westerners / non-Greeks that are incredible and are, at the very least, amazing stepping stones into the world of Greek myth for those who want to learn more about it. Out of the pool of ongoing modern Greek myth retellings/inspired works - Blood of Zeus, Hades/Hades 2, Kaos, Epic: The Musical, Hadestown, Hercules, Percy Jackson & The Olympians, and Lore Olympus - it's not hard to guess which one I'd be the least likely to recommend as gateways into Greek mythology. If those titles were organized in a list of best to worst, Kaos isn't at the top of that list, but it's sure as shit higher than LO 💀😆