Doff the red hats and bring out the finest marmalade sandwiches Buckingham Palace can muster: the country’s favourite bear is back in a glorious new musical that bursts with warmth and gentle kindness. This enchanting show is every bit as delightful as the beloved films, given that director Luke Sheppard displays all the unostentatious ingenuity of film director Paul King in transporting Michael Bond’s stories so convincingly into another medium.
It’s a rare show that lists a Bear Physicality Associate Director among the creative team, but then few major pieces of theatre are so reliant on the depiction of a little furry creature with a penchant for mishaps. The ursine solution is ingenious: Arti Shah plays Paddington onstage, offering a diminutive vision of shaggy brown fur and wide, trusting eyes, while James Hameed voices the bear offstage and is also the puppeteer for Paddington’s achingly eloquent facial expressions.
A similar split approach to the central character was a triumph for the films, with Ben Whishaw supplying that unforgettable voice, and the two seamlessly become one here.
From the moment we see him, we believe utterly in Paddington; I struggle to think of an image with a greater payload of poignancy than that of the little furry fellow sitting alone and forlorn on his suitcase at the station when he arrives from Darkest Peru.
Jessica Swale’s lively and emotionally resonant book follows the story of the first film, emphasising the fact that the Brown family, like the Bankses in Mary Poppins, are in sore need of a bit of external assistance to restore the domestic dynamic. Adrian Der Gregorian channels prime Hugh Bonneville as the ultra-cautious risk analyst Mr Brown, while Amy Ellen Richardson is all frustrated creativity as his wife.
Yet no sooner have they introduced the insatiably curious Paddington – electric toothbrushes as ear cleaners! – to their home in Windsor Gardens than peril arises. This comes in the slinkily sinister form of Millicent Clyde (Victoria Hamilton-Barritt, surely bagging every supporting actor award going), an explorer’s daughter with an unhealthy interest in taxidermy.
Tom Fletcher of McFly supplies a score of agreeable, tuneful and family-friendly songs. “The Rhythm of London”, with its Caribbean inflections, is a jaunty number praising London’s diversity – Nigel Farage probably won’t be popping this on his Spotify playlist any time soon. Paddington gets the bottom-wiggling solo “Hard Stare”, while “Marmalade” is a showstopper of a number that transforms the stage into a giddy orange fairground. I defy anyone not to snuffle during the quiet heartfelt cry for connection and security that is “The Explorer and the Bear”.
It is not only the bear design that is marvellous. Scenic designer Tom Pye makes stunning use of the high ceiling and proscenium arch of the theatre by flooding them with a changing mosaic of images that evoke Paddington’s homeland and the superhero cartoons that Mrs Brown designs.
Every detail of this show is exquisite – and I confidently predict that this will be one proudly British export that will go on to conquer the world.
Booking to 25 October 2026, Savoy Theatre London (paddingtonthemusical.com)
