MJ The Musical at a glance

Show
MJ The Musical
Status
West End run closed 28 February 2026
Venue
Prince Edward Theatre, 28 Old Compton Street, London W1D 4HS
London run
Previews from 6 March 2024; opened 27 March 2024; closed 28 February 2026
Future plans
International / Asian tour launching October 2026; UK tour planned for 2027 (dates TBA)
Genre
Musical (biographical / jukebox)
Running time
2 hours 30 minutes, including interval
Age guidance
8+; under-16s must be accompanied; under-3s not admitted; haze, strobe lighting, loud audio
Book
Lynn Nottage (two-time Pulitzer Prize winner; Sweat, Ruined)
Director and choreographer
Christopher Wheeldon (Tony Award; An American in Paris)
Lead role London
Originated by Myles Frost (March 2024); taken over by Jamaal Fields-Green from January 2025
Music
Michael Jackson catalogue plus selected Jackson 5 and period songs
Major awards
4 Tony Awards (2022) including Best Choreography and Best Leading Actor; Olivier Award for Best Theatre Choreographer (2025)
Box office
Broke house records at the Prince Edward Theatre

Looking back: MJ The Musical at the Prince Edward Theatre

4.8
★★★★★

LTH Retrospective Rating

Retrospective by the London Theatre Hub editorial team. Last updated: 13 May 2026.

The Verdict

MJ The Musical was the West End's biggest pure-spectacle hit of its two-year run. Christopher Wheeldon's production — moved from Broadway with most of its creative team intact — broke box-office records at the Prince Edward Theatre between March 2024 and February 2026. Lynn Nottage made the structural decision to frame the show inside the rehearsal process for the 1992 Dangerous World Tour: a documentary crew interviewing Jackson backstage, flashing back to childhood and the Off the Wall and Thriller years, and giving the show a built-in reason to keep cutting to choreographed set pieces. The choreography is the show's heart, and Wheeldon's Tony and Olivier wins for it were deserved.

Whether Nottage's book sidesteps too much of the more contentious parts of Jackson's life was a live argument throughout the run, and one we noted in our original review. The show focuses tightly on the work and the family pressures rather than the allegations and legal proceedings; some reviewers found this a fair editorial choice for a show centred on artistry, others a real omission. What's not in dispute is the calibre of the performances. Myles Frost (March 2024 to January 2025) and then Jamaal Fields-Green (the only performer to have played the role on Broadway, on the US tour, and in London) delivered title turns of extraordinary physical and vocal control, eight times a week, for nearly two years.

What Made It Special

  • Christopher Wheeldon's choreography. Olivier and Tony Award-winning, and the genuine engine of the show. Wheeldon's background in ballet (he was a Royal Ballet principal and has choreographed for the Royal Ballet and New York City Ballet) gave the ensemble numbers a precision rarely seen in commercial musical theatre.
  • Lynn Nottage's framing device. The 1992 rehearsal-process structure gave the show a coherent dramatic spine and a reason to keep returning to performance, rather than slog through chronological biography. The flashbacks to the Motown years and the Jackson 5 worked because Nottage anchored them in present-tense scenes.
  • The title performances. Myles Frost arrived in London having won the Tony for the role on Broadway. Jamaal Fields-Green succeeded him in January 2025 and brought a different but equally compelling reading — same technical mastery, slightly more vulnerable interpretation.
  • The Jackson catalogue. Twenty-five-plus songs across the run, including 'Billie Jean', 'Beat It', 'Thriller', 'Smooth Criminal', 'Man in the Mirror', 'Bad', and earlier Jackson 5 material. Played by a live band with arrangements by Holcenberg and Webb, the score worked both as nostalgia trip and as live musical theatre.
  • Box office: a two-year record. MJ broke house records at the Prince Edward across its run. Five million people have now seen the show worldwide across Broadway, London, Hamburg, Sydney, the US tour, and (from September 2025) Melbourne — putting it in the upper tier of commercial musical theatre of the decade.

Everything You Need to Know

What happens in MJ The Musical?

The show is set in 1992, during rehearsals for Michael Jackson's Dangerous World Tour. A documentary crew has been granted access to film the preparations. The framing device gives Lynn Nottage's book its structure: present-tense interview scenes with Jackson and his collaborators, intercut with flashbacks to the moments in his life that the questions provoke.

The rehearsal room in 1992

The Pensacola rehearsal complex is full of musicians, dancers, technicians and the documentary team. Jackson is at the height of his commercial powers — Dangerous, the album, was released the previous year — and is preparing what will become one of the most ambitious tours ever staged. The documentary's young producer, Rachel, gradually pushes past surface answers and into the past.

Flashbacks to Gary, Indiana

The first major flashback strand returns to the Jackson family home in Gary, Indiana, in the late 1960s. Joseph Jackson drills his sons through hours of rehearsal. Young Michael (played in the London production by Mitchell Zhangazha, with Joseph played by Matt Mills) is the focus of his father's most intense attention. The Jackson 5 audition for Motown; Berry Gordy signs them. Numbers from this section include early Jackson 5 hits, drawn from the Motown catalogue.

The breakthrough — Off the Wall and Thriller

A second strand moves into Jackson's late-1970s and early-1980s solo work with Quincy Jones (played in London by Rohan Pinnock-Hamilton, who doubled as Tito Jackson). The making of Off the Wall and Thriller is dramatised as a creative partnership — Jackson and Jones in the studio, the slow construction of 'Billie Jean', the writing of 'Beat It', the moment Jackson first walks the moonwalk onstage at Motown 25.

Back to 1992, and Dangerous

The show returns repeatedly to the rehearsal room. Jackson works through the tour set list with his collaborator Nick (Joshua C. Jackson), wrestles with the production scale, and dodges the documentary's harder questions. The final act sees the Dangerous tour come together as a piece of theatre: 'Smooth Criminal', 'Black or White', the toy soldier sequence, and a final 'Man in the Mirror' that closes the show. The book does not depict the post-1992 controversies; Nottage made the deliberate choice to leave the narrative at the height of the work.