Five star review of Standing at the Sky's Edge

Much of the pleasure in experiencing a good theatrical production derives from imagining what it is that has brought the protagonists to the place they inhabit. Who they are, what they do, how they function – what writers call “the backstory”. Sadly, the rather tiresome contemporary trend is that those who create musicals generally seem to disregard this aspect of their process, and merely dump the audience into a territory, and then bombard them with a flimsy plot that today has much more to do with a jukebox parade of familiar numbers than an actual and valid narrative.

In that regard, here we have a production that is gloriously defiant. We are in Sheffield, and in the very real – and still very much present – Park Hill Flats, those buildings that dominate the hill behind the central station. Once a hunting and pleasure ground for the very rich, the area was slowly built over, and became a dangerous slum with very little effective sanitation. It took many decades before they were cleared, and the flats emerged, with the first residents taking up their tenancies in the late fifties and early sixties of the last century. And this is where Richard Hawley (music and lyrics) and Chris Bush (who supplies the engaging narrative) take up the story.

It would have been so easy for them to have merely given an overview, reminiscent of a flickering black and white movie revealing the history, say, of a house and its inhabitants over the centuries. But the obvious portmanteau approach is not for Hawley and Bush, and their director Robert Hastie, for they confront the structure head on, and characters from the initial years collide with those of today, and of those from not-so-long ago. Except that they don’t collide, they weave seamlessly in and out of the flowing action, revealing their part in this extraordinary social experiment that went horribly wrong, but which is emerging once again with an air of optimism and indeed, civic pride. It’s almost impossible to describe the structure of Sky’s Edge, but standing is what it never is. It has a unique dynamic, making it not so much a musical as a very valid drama with music added. Convention is jettisoned, invention scoots in, the whole rulebook is torn up. At this time of the year, The Crucible has usually mounted a revival of a classic as their seasonal offering. Something like Guys and Dolls. And very nice too. But someone has decided that there must be a change in policy – and here we have it, emphatically hitting the bullseye in every regard.

There’s a beautifully balanced eight-strong band under John Rutledge, and a set by Ben Stones (with lighting by Mark Henderson) who together uniquely achieve the impossible of giving fluidity to brutalist concrete. But it’s the company and their choreographer Lynne Page who make this such a remarkable night in the space, and such a wonderful conclusion to the 50th year of the venue. It’s wrong to pick out anyone in particular, but let’s celebrate the young talent in this production, flowing abundantly from performers such as Faith Omole and Samuel Jordan, both of whom are names to watch.

There’s also a delicious irony here. Where else but in South Yorkshire would you find the largest concrete structure in Europe devoted to social housing, and also the biggest that was built for the privileged few? Park Hill flats, and nearby Wentworth Woodhouse. Both are now listed buildings. There’s a rich seam of stories to be told in these parts, and Hawley and Bush have only just scratched the surface.

Runs until January 21.