Walk into any McDonald’s, anywhere in the world, and place an order. In theory, your order should look and taste exactly the same every single time, wherever you are, appearing seemingly unaffected by time or geographical location. Dan Rebellato claims that the same can be said for a certain type of mega-musical. He suggests that the production of global theatre hits like Les Misérables (1985-), Miss Saigon (1989-) and Mamma Mia! (1999-) are ‘to a very significant extent, identical […] these are not new productions; they are franchises’ (2006, 3). Much like the assembly production line of a McDonald’s, McTheatre musicals are highly standardised: the creative decisions were made years ago and each worker is simply responsible for making sure their specific part in the production is carried out adequately. Even the director has little creative control and is considered more of a supervisor who makes sure the cogs keep turning.
Rebellato portrays mega-musicals as dehumanising and soulless. However, his argument can be challenged. Using the recent UK and Irish tour of Les Misérables, and particularly its run at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in Dublin, I wish to argue that the McTheatre thesis does not quite account for all the complexities of the mega-musical phenomenon. While mega-musicals clearly operate within a capitalist system of franchising, branding and efficiency, they also increase access to theatre and do not entirely erase the liveness and ephemerality that make theatre unique.
Cameron Mackintosh’s production of Les Misérables first opened in London in October 1985 and quickly became one of the most recognisable musicals in the world. As David Savran writes, ‘it is less the performance minutiae that sell tickets than the brand: the title, logo, graphics, glamour, fame, product tie-ins, and so forth’ (333). Les Misérables is not simply sold as a night at the theatre; it is sold as a globally recognisable event. Known for its iconic songs and epic scale, at first glance it appears to be a perfect example of what Rebellato describes as McTheatre. For instance, the current UK and Irish tour included a run at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, the largest fixed-seat theatre in Dublin. The theatre has a three-tier 2000 seat capacity and was built to satisfy the demand for large-scale productions that could not be adequately housed elsewhere in the city (Bord Gáis). Being built specifically to house mega-musicals like Les Misérables, the infrastructure of venues like the Bord Gáis enables McTheatre shows to dominate a particular area of the theatre market in a way that smaller or less commercial forms of theatre cannot. Rebellato argues that purpose-built theatres for these productions often privilege technical consistency and profitability over wider theatrical variety (2006, 41).
While, on the surface, the staging of Les Miserables at Bord Gáis appears to support Reballato’s argument, it is important not to overstate this point. It is too simplistic to claim that mega-musicals like Les Misérables are merely ‘crowding out’ other theatre from venues such as the Bord Gáis. The Bord Gáis was built specifically for large-scale commercial work, not for the kinds of productions that might otherwise appear at the Abbey Theatre or other smaller Dublin venues. The issue is not that Les Misérables is directly displacing every other kind of theatre, but that it exemplifies a particular industrial model of theatre-making built around spectacle, standardisation and market demand. These are contrasting spheres of theatrical production rather than competitors in a zero-sum game.
McTheatre is not just sold on the content of the production itself, but on the accessibility of the brand and the promise of a certain quality. This is where Rebellato’s thesis also begins to feel reductive. While the touring of mega-musicals in specifically designed theatres does have indisputable capitalist features, it also has positive implications. Most notably, it enables wider access to high-quality theatre for audiences who are geographically distant from London or New York. Jonathan Burston notes that ‘stage musical fans in cities with fewer theatres and smaller audience bases don’t usually enjoy the same degree of variety as New Yorkers or Londoners’ (162). Without the Irish tour, the only realistic way for many audiences in Dublin to see Les Misérables at that scale would be to travel to London, pay for transport and often overnight accommodation, as well as an already expensive West End ticket. While I am in no way questioning the worthiness of Les Misérables, having seen it myself and been utterly blown away, this kind of theatregoing would put many potential audience members at an unfair disadvantage due to income, time and geography.
Thus, by having infrastructure in place at theatres like the Bord Gáis that allows for all the scale and spectacle of the original London production, Irish audiences are not limited by their location. Mackintosh was reportedly ‘determined that audiences anywhere in the world should have the same high-quality experience as first audiences did’ (qtd. in Rebellato, 41). While this ambition is certainly tied up in commercial logic, it is difficult to deny that it also has a democratic dimension: standardisation, in this case, can work in favour of access.
It is not just the positive contributions of McTheatre that Rebellato’s thesis struggles to fully acknowledge. He also makes the questionable claim that the standardisation of these productions ‘means the usual virtues of theatre are diminished: its liveness, the uniqueness of each performance, its immediacy, its ability to respond to time and place’ (2006, 41). This implies that every performance of a mega-musical is just an exact and robotic replication of every other one, lacking the usual magic of theatre. I do not think that claim fully holds.
I myself have seen Les Misérables in the West End twice, in 2014 and 2017. Both performances had different casts, I was seated in different parts of the auditorium, and I was with different people. They were completely different experiences. I picked up on things I had not noticed before because of what I could see from a different seat. I felt different emotions in response to different songs. In one performance I was moved most by the song ‘Empty Chairs at Empty Tables’, in another by ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’. That is not because the production suddenly ceased to be standardised, but because theatre, by its very nature, can never be experienced in exactly the same way twice.
This is where I think Rebellato underestimates the resistant quality of live performance. Mega-musicals may commodify themselves, but they are still theatre and therefore are materially affected by their time, place and audience. As Savran writes, ‘The labouring bodies onstage produce not a thing to be ingested but an experience as elusive and polyvalent as it is ephemeral’ (234). Human bodies on stage are still sweating, working, singing and emoting in real time. No matter how structured the production may be, those performances remain live. They generate and embrace variation.
Rebellato also argues that ‘The director of each “new” production has no freedom to reinterpret the production; their role is to remount the original’ (2009, 102). However, the touring production of Les Misérables was not simply a carbon copy of the original Trevor Nunn staging. It was, in many ways, a refreshed version of the show, associated with Laurence Connor and James Powell and widely understood as a reworked production rather than a purely mechanical replica. This matters because it complicates the idea that McTheatre inevitably produces ‘a guarantee of predictability’ (Rebellato: 2009, 102). While there is still extensive standardisation in place, Les Misérables demonstrates that even franchise theatre can adapt, revise and modernise itself while retaining recognisability. The touring production performed in Dublin was itself tied to the 25th anniversary reconfiguration of the show, which had already begun to shift the visual and directorial language of the original. So, while Rebellato is right to identify the industrial logic of mega-musicals, he perhaps overstates the extent to which that logic entirely eliminates theatrical change.
The model of the mega-musical is therefore far more nuanced and complicated than Rebellato’s McTheatre thesis can acknowledge. There is no arguing that productions like Les Misérables possess very clear capitalist tendencies in their commodification of brand and their dependence on large-scale infrastructure. Yet, as the UK and Irish tour demonstrates, they also open theatre up to audiences who might not otherwise get the opportunity to see work of that scale and polish. In addition, the ephemerality and liveness of mega-musicals is not as severely diminished by standardisation as Rebellato suggests.
Furthermore, mega-musicals are often the first encounter many people have with theatre. As Burston suggests, many audiences have been drawn into theatre for the first time by large-scale theatrical spectacle. I still remember seeing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at my regional theatre and falling in love with the elaborate intricacies of it all. That kind of experience matters. It may be commercial, but it can still be formative, the first step on a journey.
Rebellato’s concept of McTheatre raises important and necessary concerns about the mega-musical model of production and distribution. However, Les Misérables in Dublin suggests that his thesis should not be taken entirely at face value. McTheatre may be standardised, branded and commercially driven, but it is not wholly static, and it is certainly not devoid of theatrical life.
References
Bord Gáis, ‘About Us’, bordgaisenergytheatre.ie. 21 Mar 2019. Web. 21 Mar 2019.
Dan Rebellato, ‘Playwriting and Globalisation: Towards a Site-Unspecific Theatre’, Contemporary Theatre Review 16.1 (2006). Print.
Dan Rebellato, Theatre & Globalisation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Print.
David Savran, ‘Trafficking in Transnational Brands: The New “Broadway-Style” Musical’, Theatre Survey 55:3 (2014). Print.
Jonathan Burston, ‘Recombinant Broadway’, Continuum 23:2 (2009), 159–169. Print.
Tags: 2022, Ireland, Theatre, Musical, industry
—
This article may be used free of charge. Permission must be obtained before redistribution. Selling or commercial use without prior written consent is prohibited. Copyright @ 2025 Eleanor Rose Calnan Images: ‘Home to the world’s longest running musical’ (2014) by Leo Reynolds, Flickr, Licence CC BY-NC-SA 2.0; original image has been cropped