The Little Big Things review: New musical’s approach to disability is cloying, simplistic and a little old-fashioned

If you’re allergic to musical theatre earnestness, new British musical The Little Big Things will have you reaching for the epi pen. It comes with a ringing endorsement from Andrew Lloyd Webber (“a total triumph...it will be an international smash”) that its best, most full-throated moments live up to. But the seriousness with which its creators treat this true story of disability and determination means that the bits in between have the cloying, relentless uplifting quality of a school assembly or a church youth service.

It’s based on a 2017 Sunday Times bestseller of the same name by Henry Fraser, a talented 17-year-old rugby star who dives into the sea on holiday and finds himself paralysed from the shoulders down. Adapted by Joe White (who’s behind infinitely more nuanced hit plays Mayfly and Blackout Songs), it becomes a straightforward parable about overcoming adversity.

The most interesting choice here is to have two Henrys. The fine-voiced Jonny Amies plays Henry before the accident, while wheelchair-using actor Ed Larkin plays Henry after it: the two actors tell their story together, with Henry haunted by the presence of his carefree past self. It’s a device that offers a chink of psychological realism but the window doesn’t open much further.

Henry is just so overwhelmingly good. He puts on a brave face for his worried parents, he’s patient with his sporty brothers as they rush from his bedside to rugby matches, and he sweetly holds a candle for love interest Katie (Gracie McGonigal). And he’s never angry at a world that’s still all too inaccessible to disabled people. Midway through the second act, White’s book offers a sudden pile-up of familial tensions but it comes too late in a story that’s hitherto been as sweet and smooth as a vanilla milkshake.

The score is similarly one note: if you’ve seen Dear Evan Hansen, you’ll already be familiar with its style of rousing, foot-stomping, swelling positivity. It’s an impressive introduction for its writers Nick Butcher (music and lyrics) and Tom Ling (lyrics), who more than prove they can write a tune, but it’s lacking the variety of tone, mood and genre that more seasoned composers offer.

The story’s most welcome moments come from Agnes (the wonderful Amy Trigg), a disabled physiotherapist who whizzes across the stage in her wheelchair, puncturing ableist assumptions with biting wit, and sexually dominating her enthralled medic husband. Her character’s drawn with a freedom not allowed to Henry’s real-life family members, suggesting the potential this musical could have if it untethered itself from biography a little further.

The Little Big Things is notable for being a new musical that puts disabled performers centre stage, but it’s not the first. National Theatre of Scotland and Birds of Paradise co-production My Left/Right Foot offered a sweary, messy musical performed by a cast of disabled performers, while disabled-led companies like Graeae and Ramps on the Moon make punchy, political theatre that goes far beyond straightforward inspirational storytelling. By comparison, The Little Big Things’ approach to disability looks simplistic and a little old-fashioned – a hymn to willpower and determination with barely a discordant note.

‘The Little Big Things’ runs at Sohoplace, London, until 25 November