It’s such a joy to watch new musical theatre grow and, after a sell-out run at the Southwark Playhouse in 2024 and announcing its off-Broadway run on the same day as opening night at the Marylebone Theatre, this show is doing just that.

With 7 new songs, Alex Kanefsky’s script somehow feels lighter and more fine-tuned. Tim Gilvin’s score has themes of Klezmer music running through it, and the songs are catchy and memorable, to the point where I wondered how I could enjoy a song about fascism so much (‘BUF Anthem’). Other highlights in the song list include ‘What Next’, ‘The Battle’, and Romona Lewis-Malley’s stunning rendition of ‘Stranger/Sister’, as well as the 3 versions of ‘Read All About It’ scattered throughout the script as perfectly timed comedic interludes. One of the new numbers ‘Happening Again’ is particularly poignant and powerful in the current state of the world.

The musical is told as a story within a story, a group of people gather to take a history tour of the East End, led by the great nephew of Sammy Scheinberg (Michali Dantes), a young man in 1936 who finds his neighbourhood at risk against the rise of the British Union of Fascism. Sammy’s diary is used to tell the story of the Battle of Cable Street through a series of flashbacks. The cast cleverly and seamlessly switches back and forth between juxtaposing characters, a particularly powerful moment being after Jez Unwin performs a stunning ballad about wanting to keep his son safe in an increasingly dangerous world (‘Only Words’) and then completely transforms into the leader of the fascist party with only pure artistry and a simple costume change. Preeya Kalidas switches between her characters as Ron’s alcoholic mother and political activist Elizabeth Warner with such conviction, it took me a moment to realise it was the same actor.

Across its Southwark and Marylebone runs, the balance of cultural representation appears to have shifted. Publicly available biographies suggest that the original production included several openly Jewish performers, whereas the current transfer appears to feature fewer. Although the Irish representation has significantly increased in the transfer, the general lack of authenticity in the casting is noticeable in performance texture. The show’s depiction of East End Jewish life feels less rooted in lived experience than it should. For a piece so grounded in a specifically Jewish and Irish political moment, the absence in authenticity subtly blunts its impact. Sadly, I do also think the show lost a little something adapting from a thrust configuration to a proscenium arch theatre.

Having said that, this show retells an incredibly important part of history that unfortunately feels scarily relevant to the world we live in today, and that’s why it’s more important than ever for people to engage with work like this.

You can check out Cable Street at Marylebone Theatre until 28th February 2026. Tickets available here.

Review by Rachel