Standing at the Sky’s Edge: Richard Hawley musical comes to the National Theatre

Musicals are a tricky proposition for the National Theatre. They are pretty much guaranteed to fill seats but also invite the criticism that other theatres already have the genre well covered, and is it the kind of thing the National should be investing in? 

So there must have been a sigh of relief when Chris Bush’s musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge became an instant hit when it opened in Sheffield in 2019, because with its state-of-the-nation social commentary and BBC Radio 6-friendly book, it feels right at home on the vast stage of the Olivier. 

It’s a strange proposition, taking the nostalgic pop ballads of Sheffield crooner Richard Hawley – most of them from his 2012 album Standing at the Sky’s Edge – and stringing them together into a coherent narrative set around the Steel City’s Park Hill housing estate. 

The result is a story about three generations of tenants of one Park Hill flat, charting the history of the development from the utopian vision when it was built at the end of the 1950s, through to the squalor and crime that typified the estate during the 1980s, all the way to its recent gentrification and resale to young professionals. 

The three generations play out their parts at the same time, the ghosts of the past leaving an impression on the present. There’s a steel worker and his young wife in the 60s whose livelihoods are destroyed by the closure of the steel mills; an Liberian immigrant family in the 80s who soon realise that life in a Sheffield high rise is a far cry from the Jerusalem of William Blake; and a young professional in the 2010s escaping a failed relationship down in London. 

Like Hawley’s music, it’s all very earnest, wearing its heart firmly on its sleeve. There are times when it borders on twee, and some of the story beats feel heavy-handed, even a little manipulative. But there’s also a powerful simplicity to it all, and I found myself rooting for these kind, put-upon characters chasing their fading dreams. 

It all takes place against the incredible backdrop of the brutalist estate, complete with walkways and balconies and a little upstairs flat that houses the orchestra. 

The singing is a bit hit and miss, largely split across gender lines, with the stand-out performers being Faith Omole as Joy, with her rich, soul-inflected vocals, and Maimuna Memon, whose voice has something of the Amy Winehouse to it. Their male counterparts don’t reach the same highs, struggling to capture the understated power of Hawley’s voice, and there were times I wished they’d just got him in to do the singing himself. 

But it’s hard not to be won over by the sheer, unashamed positivity of it all. Standing at the Sky’s Edge is three hours of condensed niceness, preaching truisms to the choir, but doing it with such generosity and warmth that it feels like a nice long hug.