Phil Willmott

Multi-award-winning composer, writer and director Phil Willmott’s first collaboration as a composer with Mark Collins was the musical Lost Boy, which transferred from the Finborough Theatre for an extended run at the Charing Cross Theatre and imagined the characters from Peter Pan as adults in the First World War. Following the success of Lost Boy, Mark and Phil have subsequently collaborated on Princess Caraboo (also published by Samuel French), which premiered to great critical acclaim at the Finborough Theatre in 2016 and completed commissions for Adam Kenwright and Shakespeare’s Globe. Phil Willmott’s first musical was a finalist for the prestigious Vivian Ellis Prize, and his subsequent, internationally published and regularly revived musicals include Once Upon a Time at the Adelphi (also published by Samuel French), commissioned by Liverpool Playhouse (TMA Award winner and WhatsOnStage nominee for Best Musical Production in the UK), and its US version Once Upon a Time at the Atlantic City, which premiered in Connecticut and won five Spirit of Broadway Awards, including Best Score and Best Direction; Around the World in Eighty Days, written for BAC and revived at Liverpool Playhouse, for a UK tour, and a two-year German tour; the Dick Barton Special Agent trilogy, originally commissioned by Croydon Warehouse and revived at Oldham Coliseum, Nottingham Playhouse, The Queen’s Theatre in Hornchurch, Theatre by the Lake in Keswick, The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford, Greenwich Theatre, New Wimbledon Theatre and at Southwold Rep; and adaptations of Treasure Island and Jason and the Argonauts, all of which continue to be licensed regularly by Samuel French across the globe. The adaptation of Lysistrata he wrote with Germaine Greer was recently presented as part of the Almeida’s Greek Season starring Tamsien Grieg, and his adaptation of Gorky’s The Lower Depths is published by Oberon Books. His recent plays in London include a dramatisation of Wagner’s Ring Cycle which played to 40,000 people at the Scoop; Captain Show-Off adapted from the Roman Comedies of Plautus, and Euripides’ Trojan War trilogy (also at the Scoop); Play of Thrones, a popular amalgamation of the Shakespeare that inspired George R. R. Martin (Union Theatre); Encounter, a new gay love story inspired by Brief Encounter (Above the Stage Theatre), and his reworking of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Princess Ida, which played for a sell-out run at the Finborough Theatre in 2015. He often writes about musical theatre as a regular columnist for The Stage and reviews West End and Broadway musicals for toplondontheatre.com. His website is www.philwillmott.org