‘Tesco, how can I resist ya!’ – the unstoppable stars of stage on TikTok
Theatre TikTok threw out a lifeline for actors during lockdown with musical spin-offs and plenty of theatrical silliness that has gathered momentum since. Sam Williams’s double-act with his grandma Judi Dench kept us laughing through the pandemic as he tried to tell her jokes and she foiled his punchlines. The duo seem to have retired but the videos are still up and enormously entertaining.
The best of thespian TikTok superstars combine fabulous voices with clever comic skits: Katiejoyofosho features highly among them, composing her own parody musicals including a Broadway show in one video “after Amazon buys its own theatre” which contains regular adverts and a branded backdrop among the rousing musical solos, and another called How to Flirt if You’re a Woman in a Musical. Meanwhile, Dales_drama is an 18-year-old “musical theatre kid” who performs a mix of kooky cosplay (Peter Pettigrew from Harry Potter pops up repeatedly) and gloriously sung duets such as George Salazar’s Michael in the Bathroom (from her own bathroom) and sometimes strums along on the ukulele.
TikTok makes a perfect fit for musical theatre fans as the creation of Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical proved. It began as a hashtag and culminated in a virtual concert raising millions for charity. A host of big musicals have spawned a similar cascade of video sharing: Six the Musical, which started out at the Edinburgh fringe in 2018, was heavily boosted by the social media excitement that surrounded it.
The hashtag SixTheMusical has since become is its own mini industry: the official account Sixthemusical offers straight-up clips of the songs or backstage glimpses but fan videos are far more creative, with everything from memes to musical challenges and a kiddie’s incarnation of the queens (#sixthemusicalkids).
Hamiltonmusical brings slick backstage videos from its Broadway, London and Australia shows. There is humour, adrenaline-fuelled pre-show song and dance and a ton of fan input on the hashtag. Julius Thomas III, as Alexander Hamilton on Broadway, dances in ruffled shirts and velvet tail-coats in the dressing room. More sensationally, LinManuel Miranda freestyles on Jimmy Fallon’s phone: “You’re leaving a message for Jimmy Fallon, he’s got various talents but listen he’s got lots of shit to do so please respect the balance.”
The hashtag bridgertonmusical created a big water-cooler moment over lockdown with 41m followers and 230m views. It was led by the songwriter, Abigail Barlow with her writing partner, Emily Bear, in which duetting fans reimagined the Regency-era period drama as a stage show. They drew praise from Adjoa Andoh, a star in the Netflix show, and Julia Quinn, author of the Bridgerton book series. Since then, Barlow has been confirmed as a TikTok star with 2.4m followers and a stream of catchy song, dance and lip-sync routines.
There is fun popcorn fare on theatrecafeuk, the account for the Theatre Cafe in Covent Garden, London, which has live performances along its bar and corridors and features snatches of backstage or opening night action from new musicals such as Back to the Future and Frozen. Postmodern Jukebox is quirkier, with modern and contemporary pop songs performed as theatre shows from yesteryear: so Taylor Swift’s Style as if from Grease the Musical, a 1930s version of George Michael’s Careless Whisper, Britney Spears’s Oops! I Did It Again as vintage Jazz.
Some offer up audition advice and insight, the best of which comes from actor and singer Christina Bennington who gives practical tips on how to become an actor (“practise, see as much as you can, follow casting directors on Twitter, attend open auditions … you can do it!”).
Then there is Hannah Lowther, a fabulous ball of musical theatre energy in a Tesco uniform. A recent musical theatre graduate, she became a shelf stacker at the start of lockdown and began making musical videos with a supermarket twist to them over the pandemic (the fridges and shelves are visible in the background). Her humour and talent is clear to see as she dances in Crocs and leggings along the vegetable aisle to her revised numbers, Tesco 9-5 and Dancing Queen (“Mama Mia, here I go again, Tesco, how can I resist ya”).
Last month, she announced that, after a year and a half of supermarket work, she had finally landed a part in a show, The Voices of Today and Tomorrow.Go Hannah!