MusicalTalk - The UK's Independent Musical Theatre Podcast

Nick welcomes the legendary Liz Robertson to MusicalTalk for a wide-ranging and intimate conversation spanning a remarkable life in musical theatre. Marking the 70th anniversary of My Fair Lady, Liz reflects on her experiences with the show and explores why it continues to charm, challenge and resonate with audiences seven decades on.
From working alongside the incomparable Rudolf Nureyev to sharing life with lyricist Alan Jay Lerner, Liz offers candid insights into artistry, discipline, love, and legacy. Together, Nick and Liz consider the fascinating ways in which life imitates art – and art, in turn, imitates life.

With the dust now well and truly settled, Nick sits down with Ruby – a self-confessed Wicked obsessive – to take a long look back at the two film adaptations. Together they explore what Wicked has meant to them personally over the last 25 years, how their relationship with the show has evolved, and whether the films live up to the stage phenomenon that defined a generation of theatre-goers.
From big emotional highs to creative choices that divided opinion, Nick and Ruby dig into what worked, what didn't, and why Wicked continues to provoke such passionate responses.

Nick and Hannah look back on a theatre-stuffed 2025, chatting through the shows they saw, loved, questioned and are still thinking about. From West End heavyweights to immersive experiments and concert highlights, this episode is a fast, opinionated tour of the year in musicals.
Along the way they discuss everything from Robin Hood at the Palladium, Les Misérables, Matilda, MJ The Musical and Mamma Mia! to newer and quirkier experiences including Grease immersive, Clueless, The Great Gatsby, Edward Scissorhands, Acorn Antiques and Here & Now, Wicked: Part Two, Back to the Future, Paddington, Hercules, and an unforgettable evening with Alan Menken in concert — plus a few theatrical oddities and honourable mentions along the way.
A concise, spoiler-light round-up of a very busy year, packed with strong opinions, shared laughs and plenty of musical theatre love. 🎭🎶

It's Christmas again - but didn't we have one twelve months ago?  Well, just in case Dame Shirley Bassey is correct and it all just a little bit of history repeating, we might as well mark the fact in the traditional MusicalTalk way - with our annual festive quiz!  So, pit your wits against Thos as he attempts to bamboozle, educate, irritate and inform with twelve questions covering 150 years of musical theatre history - from 1875 to last night!  With tributes to the late great Tom Lehrer, and touching on musicals about everything from airships, the Gold Rush, Sherlock Holmes, Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred E. Neuman to hybrid power sources and architects, and with songs galore from the last few years -  it's a wonderful way to wrap up a fabulous year of musicals!  Ingredients: May Contain Debbie Reynolds.

Travel back one hundred years as MusicalTalk looks at the world of theatre and musical theatre in late 1925 through the prism of the trade press of the period.  Josh and Thos thumb through an actor's newspaper from a century ago and uncover the invisible world of how the profession presented itself to its peers - through lists of classified messages, official notices, general advertisements, ads for songs, and even updates on which actors had suffered car crashes, colds or nervous breakdowns.  With Vincent Youman's No No Nanette and Jerome Kern's Sally proving the big musical hits of the season, Rodgers and Hart's Mountain Greenery premieriing in the revue Applesauce and the Gershwin Brother's musical Primrose on tour, alongside the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company holding fort in Edinburgh and revivals of the the Belle of New York and Greek Slave (a 19th Century precursor to a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), it's a real treasure trove of unexpected information.  And what's more you'll find out the answer to the age old music hall riddle - do kippers swim folded or flat? It's fascinating stuff!