Broken Legs Blog

“This show is utter madness – but, there is method in it”

It’s the 90s – the 1590s, that is, and in Tudor England, playwrights are battling it out to be the best. This is the backdrop for “Something Rotten”, a new musical that originated in America and receives its first fully-fledged UK performance at Manchester Opera House, following a concert in 2024. Jason Manford stars as Nick Bottom, a down-on-his-luck theatre maker who is determined to find a new hit to bamboozle the box office. Standing in his way is Richard Fleeshman’s Shakespeare, who is a true medieval celebrity, with crowds cheering and fainting every time he enters the stage. Whilst not even pretending to be true to life, the show features lots of clever references for the Shakespeare fans, whilst including plenty of nods to popular contemporary theatre, making this show an utterly delightful celebration of the art form. Although some of the childish comedy wears a little thin in the second act, this production will have you tapping your feet throughout with some catchy musical numbers and some incredibly likeable protagonists.

Determined to best Shakespeare, but unable to come up with any ideas of his own, Nick Bottom enlists the help of Soothsayer Nostradamus (Cory English), whose ability convinces Bottom that the future of theatre lies in musicals rather than plays. This cues one of the biggest showstopping numbers of the production, “A Musical”, which sees Nostradamus give Bottom a whirlwind tour of the genre with plenty of references to shows including Chicago, Rent, Hamilton, Les Miserables… I could go on. For anyone with a love of musical theatre, this is sure to be a hit, and English gives a performance that sees him jumping from genre to genre, a true display of both his comedic talent and his musical prowess.

Bottom immediately begins writing a musical about the biggest news event of recent times (cue musical number “The Black Death”) which does not go down particularly well with Elliotte Williams-N’Dure’s Lady Croydon, so it’s back to the drawing board. Nostradamus employs his abilities again, but this time they go slightly awry – he proclaims the most popular play of the future to be ‘Omelette’ instead of Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’. Plenty of egg-related jokes follow as Manford’s Bottom pens a musical about breakfast – one moment sees Manford step forward with an egg held aloft in place of a skull and shouting “Alas poor Yolk” instead of “Alas poor Yorick”. It is all good fun, but a joke that carries on a little too long for my personal liking. When dancers arrive dressed as eggs in the song “Make an Omelette”, it all starts to feel a little tired.

The show undoubtedly belongs to Fleeshman’s Shakespeare, who steals every scene he is in, beginning with a rock-and-roll performance of “Will Power”. Shakespeare is keen and camp, eager to be centre of attention and more than happy to show off for his adoring fans. The song “Hard to be the Bard” is one of the best musical numbers in the show, with Fleeshman playing up to the overly dramatic tendencies of an artistic diva as Shakespeare complains about how difficult his perfect life is. Tim Jackson’s direction and choreography inserts plenty of hip thrusts for Fleeshman as he prances around the stage, drawing whoops from the audience. Fleeshman’s vocal performance tends to stray into an American twang at times though, seemingly absentmindedly mimicking the Broadway cast recording rather than putting his own mark on the song.

Nick Bottom’s right-hand-man is his brother Nigel (Cassius Hackforth), a poet who falls in love with Puritan Portia (Carla Dixon-Hernandez), much to her father Jeremiah’s (Paul Ryan) horror. Hackforth and Dixon-Hernandez have excellent chemistry, forming a rather sweet B-plot as they share poetry together in increasingly suggestive ways. Jeremiah delivers plenty of innuendo, and is often accompanied by some increasingly camp Puritan brothers, who seem one step away from the Mormons in ‘The Book of Mormon’. It is Jeremiah that lends some form of threat to the story as he tries to put a stop to the Bottoms’ show, but the word “threat” here is used in the loosest sense, with the plot mostly flimsy comical fluff over anything too meaty. This is obviously deliberate – the show goes out of its way to make the point that Nick Bottom wants to produce a light-hearted play rather than something akin to Shakespeare’s depressing tragedies. That is exactly what ‘Something Rotten’ is, a surface-level, simple show that isn’t trying to be anything else, and in striving to be exactly that, it is very successful.

Colin Richmond’s set design features a mostly static backdrop of classic Tudor houses, with various levels where characters can appear from upper balconies and windows, whilst Howard Hudson’s lighting at times reflects a concert, with lighting rigs dropping from the ceiling for some of Shakespeare’s performances, with a pink tint for Nigel and Portia’s dreamworld conjured up during the song “We See The Light”. There have been accusations online of the show using generative AI to create some of the designs, although nothing particularly stood out to me, and as there has been no confirmation that this is the case, I shall speculate no further here.

If you don’t possess an encyclopaedic knowledge of musicals and Shakespeare, you are still likely to find things to enjoy in the characters and the storyline, although may find yourself feeling a bit “on the outside” of a joke at times. The accuracy of the Shakespearean references is also sometimes questionable – at one point, Portia states that Romeo stabs himself and Juliet poisons herself, when it’s actually the other way around. It seems odd that the show features so many Shakespearean references yet fails to get some of the basics correct. It is also surprising that, for a show that originated in America, this production feels increasingly pantomime-esque at times. Part of me wonders if that is due to the casting of Jason Manford, who feels like a celebrity panto cameo and doesn’t really present a character that different from his usual TV personality, although there is also something in the way the actors continually pause for applause and reaction that also puts one in the mind of panto season.

Overall, this is a fun-filled production that is a delight from start to finish. Vocal performances throughout are strong, in particular from Marisha Wallace as Nick’s wife Bea, and from Chad Saint Louis who leads opening song “Welcome to the Renaissance”. The characters are instantly loveable, and the comedy mostly lands. Make no mistake, this show is utter madness – but, there is method in it.

Tom Morley, June 2026

For more information on how I decide on star ratings, see here: Star ratings – Broken Legs Blog

Review Round-up:

Stagey Reviews: Something Rotten! – 5* from Stagey Reviews, who say that “beneath all the satire lies genuine affection for theatre. It skewers musicals while simultaneously celebrating everything audiences love about them.”

All About Theatre: Something Rotten! – Another 5* review that concludes by saying “it’s gloriously silly without ever feeling throwaway, packed with theatrical references without becoming inaccessible and consistently funny from beginning to end”

Northern Arts Review: Something Rotten! – And completing a clean sweep of 5* review, Northern Arts Review call this “wild, raucous and riotously good fun”