REVIEW - Barnum brings the circus to town, gift wrapped in a musical theatre delight!

We went to the Palace Theatre in Manchester to see Barnum. Read what our reviewer Karen Ryder had to say about this excellent production...


Barnum is one of those musical theatre moments that broke the rules and made the history books.  Take the spectacle of the circus with a combination of jugglers, trapeze artists, acrobats, and clowns, mix in real life historical stars such as Jenny Lind, General Tom Thumb, and of course P.T Barnum, and gift it to us through the mesmerising thrill and shimmy of musical theatre, with a nod to vaudeville on route for good measure, and you’re still only within tantalising reach of the sensation that is Barnum!  Although the production has seen a few tweeks and twerks during its colourful history, audience members still discuss the West End premiere back in 1981 that saw our beloved Michael Crawford take to the stage and the hire wire!  That same thrill rippled throughout the Palace Theatre Manchester this evening as the blazing lights welcomed us with anticipation of what lay ahead.

Barnum was an entrepreneurial showman who knew how to dazzle, impress, and get what he wanted. Known for his larger than life statements, his gift of the gab, his endless hard work, and his remarkable understanding of human manipulation, he may have lived in the 1800’s, but his mark on the world both in showbusiness and psychology, is still ever present today. He was fundamental in shaping not only the circus, but touring shows, and even psychologists have named a phenomenon after him – The Barnum Effect – a cognitive bias that causes people to accept broad statements as accurate, personal truths.  He is still heavily quoted today, with incredible statements such as “No one ever made a difference by being like everyone else,” or “The noblest art is that of making other people happy.”  Barnum follows his life from his humble beginnings as he set up a museum of curiosity, to his circus, touring shows, and his family and personal life.  We see the interim years after his museum burned down that led to a stint in a clock factory, before using his natural gift of the gab in the world of politics, where he was elected Mayor and, on a trajectory to become a member of Congress.  He fought for the abolition of slavery, improved city infrastructure, and fought for railroad regulation and safety.  But it is with the circus he is most strongly associated and whilst Barnum does cover these different elements of his life, it is all done to the backdrop of the big top and a good old dose of humbug!    

Heading up this multi-talented cast as the quick talking showman himself is Lee Mead (Joseph, Wicked, Chicago, Casualty &Holby) as P. T. Barnum.  He is charming, quick talking, full of pizzazz and sparkle, leaving you feeling dazed, mislead, and bedazzled – the perfect Barnum cocktail!  His voice rings out with glorious clarity, his energy never slips, and his newly acquired circus skills are executed to perfection.  It is a thrilling moment to witness him perform the dangerous hire wire without any form of safety harness or net, and it gave me the full thrill of the circus!  Monique Young (Extraordinary Women, Hello Dolly, Mary Poppins, 42^nd Street) is the wilful match for Barnum’s humbug as his wife Charity Barnum.  She supports his impulsive and risk-taking nature, not blindly, but through love, with an air of caution that is needed to try and ground his creativity in some kind of focus.  We see her question his choices, have a mind of her own, and long for stability, all the while being fully aware of his humbug and fully understanding the man she married.  Mead and Young make a great pairing and bring us a touch of rare vulnerability in their duet ‘The Colours Of My Life,’ which also holds some small but impressive magic tricks of its own.

Penny Ashmore (Dr Strangelove, Fingask Follies, Peter Pan The Musical) delights with her glorious voice as Jenny Lind, particularly when she performs acapella.  Her comedy skills are charming as she toys with Barnum when he tries to teach her English, perhaps showing the start of a spark between them, or perhaps that he has met his match.  Dominique Planter (Our House, The Lion King, Grease) brings back the wonderful music hall vibes with her performance as Joice Heth, the world’s oldest woman, giving us a fun filled number with ‘Thank God I’m Old.’  Fergus Rattigan (Julius Caesar, The Sovereign, Our Country’s Good, GOT) gives a strong performance as General Tom Thumb, and his number ‘Bigger Isn’t Better’ is jam packed with energy, fast paced rhymes, and a fizz of fun and feel-good factor.  This number makes great use of staging, creating several different spaces out of one, and even bringing us the big reveal of Jumbo The Elephant – a marvellous puppeteered design that I fully bought into.  Eamonn Cox (The Addams Family, Wizard Of Oz, Guys & Dolls) is our bountiful Ringmaster and seemed to effortlessly leap around the stage as if floating on air!  He would appear in every nook and cranny of the stage, proudly announcing the spectacle as any good Ringmaster would.

The cast of Barnum are a multi-talented, unique team, and I think you would need to watch the show several times to fully grasp the extent of all the different jobs and roles they cover between them.  The main cast and ensemble not only perform a multitude of characters, they also play a multitude of instruments!  The cast are the band and the band are the cast!  Each appearing on stage at any given time, they might be a customer, a circus performer, a worker, a narrator, and then simultaneously be playing one of their multiple instruments, whether that be a piano, trumpet, sousaphone, harp, or kazoo!  Intertwined into this is the troupe of circus performers, come dancers, come ensemble who never stop!  There is ariel work with silks and hoops, human see-saws come somersaults, acrobatics, the Cyr wheel, human stairs, backflips, contortion, fire eating, juggling, and that’s just for starters!  There is always something going on in this show, it really is a feast for the eyes!

With a stunning set designed by Lee Newby, we are drawn into the circus with the illusion of a big top tent, emblazoned with the twinkling lights displaying the name Barnum.  We are simultaneously brought inside the circus with curtains, elevated box seats, and a multi layered playground that cast members climb throughout.  It has the full colour palette expected from the circus and looks new yet familiar.  I almost wanted this to somehow bleed into the audience and the auditorium as well to complete the illusion and fully immerse us into this world full of showmanship and make us willing casualties of the full humbug experience.  With choreography from Strictly Come Dancing’s Oti Mabuse, it was a clever blend of circus acro skills, musical theatre, music hall vaudeville, and ballet, with clean and fresh dance emerging.  There were moments where dance was used symbolically, in songs such as ‘Black And White,’ where it was toned down, only to explode when colour was reintroduced.  Directed by Jonathan O’Boyle, perhaps this touring production of Barnum had a bigger challenge than any previous ones, with the whole world now being more familiar with its story since the blockbuster film ‘The Greatest Showman.’  Inevitably, many audiences members are now always going to compare, and I have to applaud that Barnum stayed true to its own original routes and theatrical setting.      

There are many songs in Barnum that will be burned into your soul if you come from a theatre or dance school background, for they offer full musical theatre and performance pizzazz whilst remaining family friendly, and so were the staple for many a show.  Many others will know the songs just through their love of theatre, and with rousing classics such as ‘Come Follow The Band,’ ‘Join The Circus,’ ‘One Brick At A Time,’ and ‘There Is A Sucker Born Every Minute,’ it’s difficult to sit through this show passively without tapping along, and carrying many earworms home with you.  This production works at such a fast pace, and its presentation is quite choppy, flitting from one thing to the next, through a variety of styles, that I think it would benefit to be aware of Barnum’s story and timeline before watching, just so you can keep up.  There is so much jammed in that there is little time to adjust as huge time periods are skipped to present the next pivotal moment in Barnum’s life, or scarcely a second to catch your breath between poignant moments before they move on to the next musical number, so it can leave you feeling a little bewildered as your emotional state cannot always keep pace with your visual and auditory senses.  A moment that springs to mind is the passing of Charity.  Gifted to us in a stylised way, it takes a moment to realise this is what is happening, before we see Barnum’s reaction, and we barely have time to feel it ourselves or empathise before he is up and singing ‘Join The Circus’ with a full ensemble bursting with joy, frivolity, and laughter.  However, maybe that is the point, to daze and confuse us exactly as Barnum would have done, so that we don’t have time to think, just act on impulse. 

Although I longed for it to take a breath every once in a while, that is perhaps personal preference.  I was also desperate for it to take that excess energy in a different direction and instead of cramming it all onto the stage, allowing it to spill out into the auditorium so it all felt immersive, even just performers in the aisles swirling ribbons, more confetti canons than the one we got, or search spotlights washing over us in the darkness as we anticipated the different elements.  Again, this could just be personal preference, but I did feel on the edge of my seat longing for just a teeny bit more.  Which sounds ludicrous, because the show was exemplary, and so I hold my hands up and admit I have zero facts to support this statement, other than a feeling.  In fact, thinking as I write, perhaps it’s not that anything was missing and I needed more, maybe just a little bit of Barnum’s hig-jiggery to rearrange things so that I had the time and space to fully appreciate everything that was right in front of my nose.  Because believe me when I say that this show is the whole package.  There was no humbug at the Palace Theatre tonight - Barnum is the real deal!  A superbly multi-talented cast who all excel in just about every area of performance, Barnum really does bring the circus to town, gift wrapped in a musical theatre delight.  So if you’ve ever thought about running away to join the circus, but are too afraid to leave your jazz hands and 5,6,7,8’s behind, then this is the perfect mash up show for you.  It is innovative storytelling with a world class team.  Barnum continues to build a new kind of theatrical experience, one brick at a time.   

WE SCORE BARNUM...

Barnum is on at the Palace Theatre, Manchester until Saturday 14th February 2026.


Watch our "In Conversation with Penny Ashmore" video discussing the show.

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