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Daily Mail
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
PATRICK MARMION reviews Stereophonic at the Duke of York's Theatre: Sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll... all that's missing is Fleetwood Mac
Stereophonic (Duke of York's Theatre, London) Verdict: Goes its own way Welcome to Stereophonic, the ' Fleetwood Mac ' play with music. Now in the West End after winning five Tony Awards on Broadway, it re-creates one of the most notorious episodes of sex, drugs 'n' rock and roll excess in all of pop history: the recording of the band's 1977 album Rumours. In the studio back then, singing and squabbling and much more besides, were Americans Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, alongside Brits Christine and John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood. As you would expect, this gives us lots to get high on in this three-and-a-quarter hour, fly-on-the-wall, dysfunctional re-enactment. But for all the slick, intoxicating staging and a jaunty rock score by Will Butler (formerly of Arcade Fire) played live by the multi-talented cast – there is one very big elephant in the studio. This is not actually Fleetwood Mac (and the name of the fictional band is never mentioned). Lucy Karczewski makes a riveting West End debut as the not-Nicks character 'Diana', combining the innocence of Ariana Grande and the agonies of Adele. She's insidiously controlled by a shady Jack Riddiford as the not-Buckingham character 'Peter' – an insecure 'covert rebel' who was the band's commercial whip-cracker. Chris Stack brings Jeff Bridges vibes to the not-Fleetwood drummer 'Simon'. And as the not-McVies we have booze-sodden Reg (Zachary Hart, falling apart in front of our eyes) and exasperated Holly (Nia Towles). There's also a terrific comic Beavis and Butthead-esque double act from Eli Gelb and Andrew R. Butler as the two sound mixers, Grover and Charlie. David Adjmi's script gets as close to reality as he probably dared; and Daniel Aukin's production is nothing if not watchable, thanks to a remarkable set by David Zinn. Butler is careful not to expose his score to much comparison, offering mostly musical riffs and snatches. And none of his full-length songs come close to matching the glorious internecine conflict of Go Your Own Way. If only they'd had the rights to Rumours... this really could have been something stunning. Stereophonic runs until October 11. Anna Karenina (Festival Theatre, Chichester) Verdict: Bookish Rating: In Chichester it's not quite Anna Karenina, either. What we want from Leo Tolstoy's 19th-century Russian door-stop is a mad-passionate love story set amid dramatic social upheaval. What we get, in Phillip Breen's artfully experimental production, is academic analysis and fascinating stagecraft. Game Of Thrones star Natalie Dormer lends steeliness and intelligence to the title role of the society woman who scandalises St Petersburg by leaving her husband and child for the catastrophic allure of Count Vronsky (Seamus Dillane, son of Stephen). But their relationship feels bookishly inert. Dormer would have been better off with the man playing the novel's Tolstoy character Levin (David Oakes), who oozes charisma as a reticent man of the country. And Oakes also happens to be Dormer's real-life husband! Mobilising 19 actors over three hours, Breen's script gives up on drama and has characters explain themselves in awkward soliloquies. But it's cleverly performed amid dolls' houses and rocking horses – as well as toy trains, foreshadowing Anna's eventual fate on the tracks. Anna Karenina is on until June 28.
The Guardian
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Stereophonic review – 70s band saga is an extraordinary, electrifying odyssey
If you've ever wanted to step into a 1970s recording studio, get to the Duke of York's pronto. Stereophonic's set designer David Zinn has rendered one meticulously, from the complex console and shabby furnishings of the mixing suite to the fully functioning recording booth it gazes upstage into. As the play's fictional band gathers behind the glass, the dramatic possibilities of their pressurised containment are immediate. David Adjmi's music-infused drama – songs by Will Butler of Arcade Fire – arrives from Broadway trailing a record number of Tony nominations for a play, and a now-settled lawsuit. Fleetwood Mac's erstwhile engineer felt the story too closely resembled the making of their best-known album. Rumours? Echoes, certainly. If you know the names Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, chances are you're going to read them in Peter, the band's controlling genius, and Diana, whose need for independence grows with her rising star. Their fellow bandmates are also under strain. Bass player Reg is feeding his addictions from a kilo-bag of cocaine: as the band approaches its chart-topping breakthrough, he's on course for a breakdown. Zachary Hart's physical performance vibrates with tragicomic energy while Nia Towle, as his wife, Holly, absorbs the consequences ('It's a torture to need people'). Even Chris Stack's peace-making Simon is rendered hysterical by an infuriating buzz from his drums. Director Daniel Aukin's production is as exacting and truthful as the script itself. Sounds and voices overlap as mic channels are opened and closed; silences are underscored with boredom and exhaustion. In between the kit-tinkering and longueurs are moments of creative transcendence, including a late-night epiphany so electrifying that the sound waves will excite your internal organs. The cast, playing their own instruments, convince as an ensemble of longstanding and Lucy Karczewski, as Diana, has a voice that captivates even when it is exposed and cracking in a tense overdubbing session. Behind the mixing desk, Eli Gelb and Andrew Butler reprise their Broadway roles as inexperienced-but-ambitious engineer Grover and his oblivious sidekick Charlie. Grover may begin as a comic foil, desperate to avoid the whirlpool of angst, but like every character (including Jack Riddiford's infuriating Peter) he is empathically realised across the band's year-long odyssey. At more than three hours, the run time can feel as indulgent as one of Pink Floyd's longer tracks – but this is an extraordinary allegory for artistic perfectionism and the destruction it leaves in its wake. At the Duke of York's theatre, London until 11 October
Telegraph
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Broadway hit Stereophonic is the closest you will come to being in the studio with Fleetwood Mac
Playwright David Adjmi's deft, droll portrait of an ascendant 1970s Anglo-American rock band protractedly – and acrimoniously – recording their 'difficult' second album in California arrives from Broadway trailing clouds of glory. It was named Best Play at the 2024 Tony awards; the New York Times anointed it 'a must-see American classic'. There's no small pressure, then, on Daniel Aukin's hit production and the West End cast (including three key players from the New York run) to wow us. Do they? Yes, up to a considerable point. Stereophonic is an original, if obvious idea, executed with elan – yet it also feels a touch two-dimensional. In its huge favour: after three hours of eavesdropping on a lovingly recreated retro recording studio (anachronistic Yamaha monitors aside), you'll likely emerge from the theatre feeling elated and attached to the unnamed band – two fractious couples and a drummer with a fraying marriage back home. They slog through sessions, and verbally slug it out, tended by a pair of geeky but laid-back sound engineers. There's idle chat and cocaine, spliffs and tiffs, and gilded moments when the music (impressively performed live by the cast) goes from side-show to main event. Was Adjmi inspired by the making, in 1976, of the Fleetwood Mac album Rumours? There are certainly striking parallels, not least between the play's American female singer and Stevie Nicks; and the songs, by former Arcade Fire member Will Butler, have a seductive Mac-ish energy. A lawsuit by Ken Caillat, the author of a 2012 book about the experience of producing Rumours, resulted in an out-of-court settlement earlier this year. Laying aside the controversy, Stereophonic clearly broaches creative struggle more broadly – the way pain can yield artistic gain, but also the human cost of going for broke. While the balance between art and heart-ache, technical challenge and emotional clash, is well achieved, what's missing are the specifics that might give the band a stronger inner-life. We're left in the dark when it comes to the minutiae of their past, or the day-to-day logistics of their existence (no fans, journalists or corporate types intrude). When their previous album tops the charts, it feels curiously incidental; how the new album alters because of the shifting dynamics seems nebulous. It's best to tune into the finely calibrated performances, and luxuriate in warm nostalgia for that colourful, flare-trousered era, blighted though it was, as we're reminded, by addled brains and chauvinist thinking. Lucy Karczewski and Nia Towle shine as the band's golden-voiced, ever more independent-minded women. The men combine a comically unlovely lordliness with intermittent pathos: Zachary Hart emitting hippy gibberish and romantic distress as the wrecked bass-player; Jack Riddiford sullen yet magnetic as the front-man; Chris Stack tilting between paternalism and petulance as the dandy drummer. Eli Gelb endears himself as the gradually emboldened chief knob-twiddler while Andrew R Butler is a delight as his sidekick. It all adds up to a rewarding, if long night. A modern classic, though? Not so sure, man.
Telegraph
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
How Fleetwood Mac inspired the West End's hot new play – and a very ugly lawsuit
This month, one of Broadway 's most successful recent plays transfers to the West End. Stereophonic is set in a recording studio and tells the story of a five-piece British-American rock band recording an album in trying circumstances in California, 1976. Having debuted off-Broadway in 2023 before transferring to New York's stately John Golden Theatre in 2024, Stereophonic, written by American playwright David Adjmi and with music by former Arcade Fire member Will Butler, became the toast of the town. It's the most Tony-nominated play of all time, receiving 13 nominations last year – beating the record previously held by Jeremy O Harris's Slave Play, with 12 – and winning five awards, including Best Play. Stereophonic was also named the season's best play by the New York Drama Critics' Circle, among myriad other accolades. But despite its run at the Duke of York's serving as its London debut, Stereophonic may strike a familiar chord with British theatre-goers. After all, the story bears strong similarities to the recording of Fleetwood Mac 's 40-million-selling album Rumours, which was also recorded in trying circumstances by the five-piece British-American rock band in California in 1976, and released in February the following year. From its location and era to its band members' genders, conflicts and drug habits, the play's story arc may seem to some like, well, second-hand news. Like Fleetwood Mac, the band in Stereophonic comprises a male British drummer and bass player, a female British vocalist-pianist, a male American guitarist-vocalist and a female American vocalist. All of whom could be interpreted as Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks respectively. In the play, the two couples are mid-break-up, just as the McVies and Buckingham and Nicks were during Rumours' high-tension creation. Cocaine was everywhere (it also features in the play). 'Drama. Dra-ma,' was how the late McVie described the recording process to Rolling Stone shortly before the release of what is often hailed as one of the greatest albums ever made. Even Stereophonic's music, played live by the actors during the three-hour show, sounds – to my ears – like Fleetwood Mac, from the Chain-like throb of Masquerade to the Dreams-esque Bright (Fast). 'Stereophonic is a triumph that sneakily takes the Fleetwood Mac story to Broadway,' ran a headline in Rolling Stone last spring. The same piece said that Stereophonic 'might as well be titled Who's Afraid of Fleetwood Mac?, given all the covert and not-so-covert references to the band'. Fleetwood Mac stage shows do exist – a show featuring the band's music, Go Your Own Way, opened in the West End in 2023 and is now touring, as are the perennially popular covers band Rumours of Fleetwood Mac – but these are more tribute nights than serious dramas. Stereophonic's playwright Adjmi declined to be interviewed for this article, but he has called the musical a 'fantasia' whose inspiration came from many places. 'I keep getting the question 'Is this Fleetwood Mac? Is it this and that?' Why do people want to know that?' Adjmi told Variety in April 2024. 'There is no real story. The whole thing is invented.' Still, Stereophonic was deemed to have overstepped the mark by Rumours producer Ken Caillat when he saw the play last year. Caillat, now 78, sat behind the mixing desk for Rumours's arduous year-long recording process as a 29-year-old. In 2012 he co-wrote a book called Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album. Caillat watched Stereophonic 'in a daze' and saw 'uncanny' similarities between Making Rumours and the play, according to a New Yorker article published last September. 'I feel kind of a numnuts… I feel ripped off,' he said. Adjmi was quoted in the same article as saying that any similarities to the 'excellent' Making Rumours book were 'unintentional'. But, last October, Caillat and his Making Rumours co-writer Steven Stiefel launched legal action against Adjmi and numerous other parties involved in the play. In a 29-page complaint filed at the Southern District of New York Court – seen by the Telegraph – Caillat and Stiefel alleged that Stereophonic 'copies the heart and soul of Making Rumours'. Their complaints centred around the fact that Stereophonic is essentially told from the perspective of a producer, 'Grover', just as the story in Making Rumours is. And from there, the pair argued, the alleged similarities piled up. These alleged similarities, Caillat and Stiefel contended, ranged from the stage set – with the audience positioned behind the studio's mixing desk – to the fact that Grover is promoted from sound engineer to co-producer during the recording of the play's album, just as Caillat was during Rumours, for which he won a Grammy. Narrative details and conversations from Making Rumours were also uncannily close, Caillat and Stiefel argued. For example, an outburst from Christine McVie, who died in 2022, towards Caillat is closely replicated in Stereophonic, as is a nasty physical altercation between Buckingham and the producer after Caillat recorded over a take on Buckingham's instruction. Caillat's use of the phrase 'wheels up' is used by Grover, while a scene about 'Houseboat wars' – battles between local houseboat dwellers and residents – appears in both Making Rumours and Stereophonic. Caillat and Stiefel sought damages, an injunction and legal fees from the makers of Stereophonic, which they estimated to have grossed $20 million. The case was settled out of court in January. Speaking together for the first time since they wrote the book, Caillat and Stiefel tell me what Rumours – and Making Rumours – meant to them. 'Recording Rumours was the highlight of my young adult life,' says Caillat. 'I loved working with Fleetwood Mac, making them sound even better than they do in real life, putting my magic into the sound. You never know when you're going to be part of history, so always strive to do your best.' The Californian says that for years, friends would ask him to retell stories about recording Rumours. Then, in the Noughties, someone suggested he write a book. 'I sat down, gathered all my historical track sheets about everything we did each day during the production of the album. These notes were rich with information about what instrument we used and what song we worked on each day. Armed with this information, I wrote the story of my year of making this album. While I was writing, I was thoroughly convinced that I was that 29-year-old boy again,' he says. Caillat then passed his 80-page document – single-spaced, no paragraphs – to Los Angeles-based writer Stiefel, who turned detailed notes into a book with a narrative arc. 'We set out to tell an Almost Famous-esque story, where the band is sort of the backdrop to the primary story of a young studio engineer trying to succeed,' says Stiefel. 'Getting to work on this book was, for me, akin to Ken's opportunity to work with Fleetwood Mac back in the day. The journey of Making Rumours (the book) and Rumours (the album) are similar in that they were all-consuming creative processes.' Caillat and Stiefel won't comment on their settlement with Stereophonic's creators, beyond saying things were 'resolved on mutually agreeable terms'. Adjmi has always maintained that Stereophonic's inspiration comes from multiple sources, including Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Butler's own Arcade Fire and female-centred bands like The Mamas & the Papas and Heart. He told Variety that the initial idea actually came when he was listening to Zeppelin's Babe I'm Gonna Leave You on a flight a decade previously. He imagined Robert Plant singing, with all the inherent desire and anguish in his voice. He then thought about the dramatic possibilities presented by a cloistered environment such as a studio. The glass wall that separates artist and producer, for example, allows conversations to be half-private, half-shared. Just like Rumours, Stereophonic had its own rocky ride to runaway success. And this is where things get even more meta. An initial 2020 production was derailed by Covid, while sound designer Ryan Rumery (who later won a Tony for the play) said Stereophonic was the 'most arduous' project he had ever worked on because all the sound is relayed live to the audience via a real studio console. Adjmi has spoken about a 'combustible, interesting' on-stage energy stemming from the tension between his exacting dialogue and director Daniel Aukin's more flexible approach. One group of people who haven't seen the play are, apparently, Fleetwood Mac themselves. Nicks hadn't heard of Stereophonic when asked about it in an interview last year, while Deadline reported that the three other living members – John McVie, Buckingham and Fleetwood – haven't seen it either. Still, Adjmi has said that he's interested in adapting it for the silver screen, while Caillat and Stiefel tell me that their book, Making Rumours, has 'garnered interest from Hollywood' – with a draft of a feature script already completed. On top of this, Fleetwood Mac are working on a 'definitive' authorised documentary with Apple TV+ (directed by Hollywood heavyweight Frank Marshall), although given that Stereophonic is nothing to do with the band, one imagines there won't be much overlap. So prepare for a full-on Mac attack, or at least a Mac-adjacent one. But whether it's a case of 'Don't Stop' or 'Oh Well' rather depends on your perspective.
Telegraph
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Stereophonic: What to know about the Tony Award-winning musical play and how to find Stereophonic tickets
What is Stereophonic about? Become a fly on the wall for a crucial moment in the life of a fictional rock group in Stereophonic. It's 1976 and the up-and-coming British-American band is in a recording studio in California, under pressure to put out their all-important second album. But personal and professional conflicts soon erupt. The band features two warring couples: Reg and Holly, and Peter and Diana. That fraught quartet is trapped in the space with their drummer Simon and two sound engineers, Charlie and Grover. Romantic tensions, the pressures of fame, creative ambition, drug problems, ego, and occasional euphoria all fuel a riveting drama. Will they break through – or break up? Stereophonic is written by David Adjmi and features phenomenal original music by Will Butler of the band Arcade Fire. The show is entirely live, with the cast all singing the songs and playing their own instruments, so the audience truly does feel like they're eavesdropping on a real album recording. Stereophonic premiered in 2023 and was an instant hit. It transferred to Broadway in 2024 and made history as the play with the most Tony Award nominations ever: a whopping 13. It duly won multiple awards, including Best Play and Best Direction. Now London audiences get their invitation to see the hottest band in town. How to buy tickets for Stereophonic You can find seats for the London production of Stereophonic on Telegraph Tickets. Check the site for the latest prices. The cast The London Stereophonic production will repeat the feat of the smash-hit Broadway run by once again casting performers who can not only act but also sing and accompany themselves on guitar, bass, drums and more. On Broadway, the company featured Will Brill, Sarah Pidgeon, Tom Pecinka, Juliana Canfield, Chris Stack, Andrew R Butler, and Eli Gelb. The Stereophonic play London cast is yet to be fully announced, although we do know that Gelb, Butler and Stack are all reprising their incredible performances. It will be exciting to see if more of the original cast join them, or if we get a chance to see new actors in the show. Stereophonic playwright David Adjmi has written numerous acclaimed plays, including Stunning and Marie Antoinette, and won a Tony Award for Stereophonic. Composer Will Butler, of the Grammy-winning indie-rock band Arcade Fire, has also been Oscar nominated for the score of the movie Her. The details Where is Stereophonic playing? Stereophonic runs at the Duke of York's Theatre, which is on St Martin's Lane, close to Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, and other theatres in London's West End. What is the running time of Stereophonic? The running time of Stereophonic is 3 hours and 10 minutes, with a 20-minute interval. How long is Stereophonic running for? Stereophonic is currently booking to September 20, 2025. What is the minimum age for Stereophonic? The age recommendation for Stereophonic is 13+. Does Stereophonic have accessible tickets? Yes, the show has captioned, BSL and audio-described performances scheduled. Find more information on the theatre website. FAQs Is Stereophonic based on Fleetwood Mac? Not officially, although there are definite similarities between the unnamed fictional band in Stereophonic and the iconic real-life band Fleetwood Mac. The latter is also British-American, featured couples among its line-up (John and Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks), and recorded a landmark album in 1977, Rumours. How much are Stereophonic tickets? There are a range of Stereophonic tickets at different price points in the stalls, royal circle, upper circle and boxes of the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End. See the latest Stereophonic ticket prices and buy your tickets here.
