CATERPILLAR EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐
The Drama
If, somehow, you do not know the story…take this as your friendly spoiler alert!
It’s 1985 and Doc Emmett Brown (Roger Bart) has built a time machine…from a DeLorean.
It may have taken 30 years – since he fell from a toilet and hit his head and saw what makes time travel possible – but he’s finally invented the flux capacitor. Now he’s at the Twin Pines Shopping Mall in Hill Valley, ready to realise his dream of travelling into the future.
But in a mix-up of mid-80’s Hollywood proportions, Doc Brown’s sidekick, Marty McFly (Axel Duffy), jumps into the DeLorean during an emergency, revs to 88 miles per hour and ends up in 1955.
Great Scott!
So, now Marty’s in a bit of pickle.
He needs the help of a much younger, and much less self-realised, Doc Brown to help him go back to the future…
It should be easy enough…
All Marty has to do is outsmart local meathead, Biff Tannen, somehow rebuff his mother’s romantic advances, get his mum to kiss his nerdy dad at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance – and, thereby, reset the space-time continuum on the right course to ensure his own existence and that of his siblings – before harnessing the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity required to power the flux capacitor at the exact moment the DeLorean reaches 88 miles per hour.
Oh! And get back to future in time to tell Doc Brown what steps he needs to take, in 1985, to save his own life.
Woah! That’s heavy! This may be more difficult than first expected.
A Fun Adaptation
The Back to the Future Musical is a worthy adaptation of the beloved movie.
Aspects of the plot have been changed. For example, I won’t give away why Doc Brown’s life is endangered in the Twin Pines Shopping Mall carpark that fateful morning, but it’s no longer irate Libyans looking to recover their stolen plutonium. Other aspects of the story are compressed to meet the limitations of telling a story on a stage. Otherwise, the plotlines are mostly faithful to the original.
I remember enjoying the original musical numbers, whilst in the theatre, but confess that I can’t remember many of them now, other than Doc Brown’s sorrowful lament, For the Dreamers:
Let’s hear it for the dreamers
Who never stop believing
One grain of sand becomes a pearl
A great idea can change the world
They can see what others don’t
Try things others won’t
Otherwise, Johnny B Goode, the Power of Love and the original theme music remain the highlight.
Stunning Stage Effects
What really did get my heart thumping, with the power of 1.21 gigawatts, was the stage effects.
I don’t know how they did it, but the sight of Marty McFly screaming down the road to the Hill Valley Town Hall building, in his souped-up DeLorean, was truly thrilling. Perhaps even more exciting than the scene in the original movie.
I almost jumped to my feet to applaud the stage craft when Marty was successfully sent back to the future. An absolutely stunning piece of theatre. One of the most thrilling sequences I’ve ever seen played out on a stage.
What My Eyebrows Told Me
I first saw Back to the Future in the cinema in December 1985 as a 17-year-old. It was one of the more impactful movies from my youth. Even now, 40 years later, I sometimes whisper to myself, in a wistful moment, that I wish I had access to a DeLorean and a flux capacitor to fix something I’d stuffed up. And I remember wishing I could be more like Marty McFly!
The Back to the Future Musical is a future production which took me back to the past. My eyebrows were in a Caterpillar Arch throughout.
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