DANIEL BUCKROYD has directed the UK professional premiere of the Off-Broadway hit musical comedy Disenchanted!, currently running at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe before a mid-scale UK tour in 2027.
Enchanted! debunks once and for all the myth of the ‘damsel-in-distress’ as audiences wave goodbye to the traditional image of the beauty-obsessed, ditzy and insecure princess and say hello to a gang of bold, brilliant, young women, ready to raise the roof (or smash a few glass ceilings).
Created by Dennis T Giacino and Fiely Matias, this brand-new production, co-produced by Lichfield Garrick in collaboration with The Production Garden, features Ashley New as Mulan and Pocahontas, Eliza Bowden as Belle, Little Mermaid and Rapunzel, Jewelle Hutchinson as Princess Who Kissed A Frog, Lois Glenister as Snow White, Roshaan Saulnier as Sleeping Beauty and Princess Badroulbadour and Rosie Napper as Cinderella.
Daniel Buckroyd is the current artistic director of the Lichfield Garrick Theatre, a role he previously held at the Exeter Northcott and Mercury Theatre, Colchester.
Here Daniel continues Musical Theatre Review’s interview series: Five Questions With…
Disenchanted! flips the traditional fairytale narrative on its head. What was it about this show’s message that made you want to bring it to UK audiences?
As soon as I first heard the music (there’s a great studio recording on Spotify) and then read the script, I was struck by just how witty and accessible this show is. We all know this kaleidoscopic cast of characters and instinctively understand that they represent an outdated view of the role of women. To have that skewered with such wit and such an amazing set of songs convinced me that a UK audience would respond just as strongly to the spirit and fun of the show as audiences clearly already have in many other countries around the globe.
L-R The cast of Disenchanted!: Ashley New, Eliza Bowden, Roshaan Saulnier, Rosie Napper, Lois Glensiter and Jewelle Hutchinson. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography
This is the UK professional premiere of an Off-Broadway hit – how do you balance staying true to the spirit of the original while shaping something fresh for audiences?
As a director, when mounting a new production of any existing show I always start my search for the ‘spirit of the original’ in the book and score – all the clues should be there and certainly are for Disenchanted! But in this case the writers, Dennis Giacino and Fiely Matias, also generously took time to talk to me about their original intentions and my vision for a UK premiere. They were incredibly supportive of our team finding our own responses to their writing, and I think that captures our approach.
Rather than setting out specifically to do something different with the show, I think what our cast and creative team have done is to pool our sensibilities and senses of humour and combine that with the original to create our own version of the show. This seem to be speaking to audiences with audiences in Edinburgh and hopefully will continues to do so on tour for years to come.
Star of Disney’s Snow White live action remake Rachel Zelger with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe cast of Disenchanted!
You’ve assembled a cast with strong musical theatre and comedy credits. What was the rehearsal process like?
We were inundated with interest from actors keen to get involved in this project – it’s such an iconic set of roles – so we were able to assemble a supremely talented cast of six young female musical theatre performers whose vocal abilities are matched are only by their brilliant comedy instincts, so rehearsals were a joy from start to finish, flipping between amazing moments of close harmony singing and gales of laughter as the cast brought the physical comedy that runs through the show bursting into life.
These characters reject the “happily ever after” narrative – what do you hope audiences, particularly younger viewers, take away about independence and identity?
By tackling head-on the societal norms that combine to create the images of young women we see in Disney films, the writers have come up with a joyously liberating show where audiences, young and old and particularly female, feel empowered to confront (and laugh at) the absurdity of misogyny. It’s a serious feminist critique of contemporary popular culture dressed up as a comic cabaret musical, so audiences are both having a whale of a time and, maybe, coming away with a new perspective on some of the stories they’ve been told.
Looking across your career, how has your approach to directing musical comedy developed and how has that influenced your staging of Disenchanted?
I wish I could answer this question by pointing to a specific way in which my approach to directing musical comedy, indeed to directing in general has developed over the 30-plus years I’ve been doing it, but the truth is it’s always just a combination of vision, enthusiasm, openness and experience that a director hopefully brings to make the kind of happy rehearsal room that can nurture a happy show.
If there’s one thing I think I’m slightly better at these days, it’s listening to my gut instincts about when a moment isn’t firing on all cylinders and merits more time, thought and fresh ideas, so with our runs in Lichfield and Edinburgh and then touring I expect we’ll keep tinkering as audiences teach us what needs more work
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