Kevin! [The Musical] is an up-and-coming dark comedy show written by Will Sharland. It follows an exchange student from England, named Kevin, who comes to America intending to find out what the modern day USA is really like. Kevin, however, finds himself trapped inside the world of a cheesy high school musical, which only becomes more absurd and nightmarish during his time across the pond. Kevin is unsure who to trust as everyone seems insane, though it might be Kevin himself, or something else, that is actually crazy in this highly satirical musical set in the tumultuous present day United States…
The journey so far… In June 2013, Will Sharland was randomly inspired whilst bored on a family holiday to write a musical about how much he f*cking hated musicals. The initial idea was based on how terrifying (but funny) it would be if a normal person was somehow trapped in a cheesy musical, particularly if this character was an introverted, awkward and cynical British teenager like Will Sharland was, and especially if this musical was something as extroverted, cheesy and bright as High School Musical. To parody musical theatre though, Will Sharland realised that he needed to heavily research musicals which led him to watch every musical he possibly could as well as to take part in numerous musicals himself. After doing all of this however, Will Sharland ironically grew to love musical theatre and thus wrote what would later become known as Kevin! [The Musical] to be a twisted love letter to the medium. On the one hand, it would makes fun of all the cliques of musical theatre, and on the other hand it would pay homage to musicals themselves…
When Will Sharland began writing this show, he naively believed that he would finish writing the entire thing in just a few months. However, after over 11 years of writing, this show has only recently reached a point where it can be staged. The show has undergone immense change since it was first conceived, it has been re-written dozens of times, and many scenes and songs from the show were performed and recorded in isolation. It was not until November 2023 however, that the first major development with this show would happen when the first ever full workshop for this musical would take place at the Royal Northern College of Music involving over twenty people…
Following the success of this first workshop, the show began to snowball with more people wanting to be involved. The show was re-written and another workshop took place in March 2024. Not long after the second workshop, the project was selected out of many applicants to be given the Opera Theatre Stage at the Royal Northern College of Music for five days over ‘Lab Week’ for research and development. During this week, several scenes and songs from the show were performed and recorded on a professional theatre stage with a nine-piece pit band…
Not long after Lab Week, a Crowdfunding page was launched to get this show performed for the first time ever. To date, the project has raised almost £5k from both the Crowdfunding page and GoFundMe page. We are still intending to raise more, and we are currently applying for more funding schemes. We were shortlisted for the RNCM’s Creative Innovator Award, and we are awaiting feedback from other schemes we have applied for as well…
In any case, after many years of writing, building momentum, and finding the right people to be involved in this project, Kevin! [The Musical] is now finally in a position to be performed in March 2025! Tickets will be on sale from November 3rd, so be sure to buy your ticket to the world premiere that is taking place at Z-arts in Manchester of this original dark comedy musical!