Ian Cheeseman presents Break-a-Leg on Tameside Radio, which is packed with great guests and theatre music. Read his latest column here...

It’s been truly fascinating to watch, at first hand, the development of Back to the Future the Musical, from concept to award winning West End hit. My son regards the film, which came out in 1985, five years before he was even born, as the best ever made. He collects memorabilia and is building an amazing scale model of the iconic time travelling DeLorean car. 

When news first broke that his perfect film was going to be a Musical, he was scared. He feared that the Michael J Fox classic would be ruined by turning it into a song and dance show. He couldn’t imagine the Doc, played so brilliantly by Christopher Lloyd on screen, singing a song and having a dance number. 

I’d been at the launch of some of the songs, which Christopher Lloyd attended. I’d interviewed Lloyd and the singer/actor who would be playing the Doc on stage, Roger Bart. I’d heard Bart sing before. He was the voice of Hercules, in the Disney animation, singing “Go the distance”, which is one of my favourite Disney songs. 

By the end of that first performance we were blown away. We didn’t know that Theatre was going to be closed down by Covid within weeks, but we booked four more performances, taking advantage of the £19.55 tickets, priced as a gimmick because that was the year they travelled back to. We were at the official World Premiere and then the show suddenly ground to a halt. 

As the pandemic started to come to an end Back to the Future reopened at the Adephi Theatre in London, with the same main cast and very quickly it started to win awards as it wooed audiences. We were hooked and took every opportunity to go and see it in it’s new home. We grew emotionally attached to “our” Marty, Olly Dobson, several other cast members and the brilliant Roger Bart. 

A few months ago, five of the original main cast members left, so we went down again to see their last performances. We even sat, by accident, next to Olly’s grandparents, who told us it had been Olly’s dream to play Marty since he’d been a small boy. You could tell how much it meant to him when he performed. It was an emotional night. 

This week Roger Bart said his farewells to the London production, so we raided the piggy bank again and travelled down to see him for his last appearance as the West End “Doc”. It was another emotional night with Bart doing a farewell speech, when the show ended. The tears started to flow too. It’s not the end of his Back to the Future story, he’ll be playing the role on Broadway from the end of June and we’d already booked a holiday to New York before that was announced, so of course, we immediately booked tickets. 

It’s amazing how the perfect film has created such a wonderful musical and that has given us so much pleasure on so many occasions. We can’t be the only people who watch a musical over and over again. I’ve met many people who’ve attended Les Miserables, Sound of Music and others over and over again. When the music is right, the story hits a chord and you come out of the theatre feeling great, it becomes addictive, in the nicest possible way. 

You’ll be able to hear Roger Bart’s farewell speech during Break-a-Leg, my weekly Theatre and Musicals show on Tameside Radio 103.6FM every Sunday from 7pm. My other guests include Fed Zanni, who was recently in Head over Heels at the Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester and there’s the final part of my chat with comedian Steve Royle, plus loads of great show tunes too!

You can join Ian for Break-a-Leg on Tameside Radio 103.6FM every Sunday evening from 7pm to 9pm and Wednesdays from 9pm to 11pm. You can also catch up on previous episodes here.