I walked out of the Bristol Hippodrome with a smile I couldn’t shake.

That’s the test I use. Not the standing ovation (those happen more often than not). Not the critical consensus. Not even the box office. It’s whether the smile is still there twenty minutes later when I’m looking for a cab.

It was.

When your opening number contains the lyric “this is the greatest show,” you have made a very specific promise to your audience. The world premiere of The Greatest Showman musical kept it. And then some.

Here are the three reasons I think this show works . . . and why I think it’s going to be one of the biggest musicals of the decade.

Reason #1: Disney Adapts Source Material That Was Already a Musical.

I’ve watched Disney Theatrical make this choice over and over again, and I don’t think people talk about it enough.

Beauty and the Beast was a musical. The Lion King was a musical. The songs were already there. The emotional architecture was already built. The audience already had a relationship with the material that ran deeper than casual familiarity.

The Greatest Showman was a musical, folks.

“This Is Me.” “A Million Dreams.” “The Greatest Show.” These songs have been played at weddings, at graduations, in cars at full volume by people who needed them. When that opening number started and the first lyric landed, half the audience was already feeling something before the staging even registered.

That’s not luck. That’s strategy. And Disney understands it better than anyone in the business.

Reason #2: The Creative Team Is a Once-in-a-Generation Combination.

Casey Nicholaw directed and choreographed this production.

I want you to sit with that for a second. If you’re trying to deliver a show that is simultaneously rousing, joyous, electric, heartfelt, and technically immaculate . . . there is no one better. Casey operates in a category of one.

Then you add Pasek and Paul. The team behind Dear Evan Hansen. The team that won the Oscar for La La Land. They didn’t just license their existing songs for this production — they wrote five brand-new ones specifically for the stage.

Five new songs.

That’s a full creative commitment. That’s Pasek and Paul saying: this deserves something the movie doesn’t have.

Then you add David Korins on scenic design. You know his work. Hamilton. His set here makes the theater feel like the whole world is inside it. Tim Federle wrote the book. Alex Lacamoire is on music supervision and orchestrations. (If you don’t know Alex’s name, you know his sound – he’s the reason Hamilton sounds the way it does.)

Oliver Tompsett as P.T. Barnum. Samantha Barks as Charity. Lorna Courtney as Anne Wheeler. Vajèn van den Bosch as Jenny Lind. Malinda Parris as Lettie Lutz. This cast delivers at every level.

What happens when you put all of that in a room together? Alchemy. The kind you can’t manufacture. The kind that just . . . works.

Reason #3: They Didn’t Just Put the Movie on Stage.

This is the one that matters most. And it’s the one that’s hardest to do.

They could have. With the IP, with the audience goodwill, with the songs already embedded in people’s hearts – they could have produced a faithful recreation of the film and sold out every seat.

They said no.

What they built instead uses everything that live theater can do that film cannot. The magic. The circus. The physical, breathing, immediate spectacle of watching human beings do extraordinary things ten feet in front of you. P.T. Barnum understood this about live entertainment over a century ago. This creative team understands it too.

The result is a show that gives the audience everything they loved about the movie and then gives them something the movie simply cannot deliver.

That’s the job. That’s always been the job.

The Bristol Hippodrome run has concluded . . . but this is only the beginning. The Greatest Showman is heading to the West End at Theatre Royal Drury Lane later this year, and Broadway, I’m sure, is next. Early reviews called it “breathtaking – a dazzling spectacle destined for the world’s biggest stages.” I’d say that’s accurate.

See it when it comes to you. Wherever you are in the world, something tells me it will.

(And yes – I would have had a curtain call video. They put covers over our cameras. Which tells you everything you need to know about that curtain call.)

So here’s my question for you: which Disney film do you think deserves the stage treatment next, and why?

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