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You’ve seen the film, right? This is the (pretty awful) musical version of the (fairly decent) film of the (I haven’t actually read it) novel.
It opens in the offices of Runway magazine, where journalism graduate Andy Sachs stumbles into a post as second assistant to Miranda Priestly, fashion’s unflinching high priestess. Lattes, hostile glares from first assistant Emily and impossible deadlines are pretty much all you see in the first half. In the second half, Andy discovers a betrayal, chooses loyalty to her editor over her own career advancement, then recoils at the cost and walks away from the gilded world she has briefly conquered. It is the same arc the film laid out 19 years ago, rendered here with less nuance and more volume.
What lets the show down first is Elton John’s score. The tunes arrive in glossy packaging but play like variations of each other. ‘Dress Your Way Up’ is serviceable but indistinct, ‘Mirror Mirror’ borrows its propulsion from any number of mid-tempo pop ballads, and the power-anthems assigned to Miranda Priestly never vault beyond predictable chord lifts. A production with this budget should produce at least one song that asserts itself as part of musical theatre’s shared vocabulary. But we leave humming nothing.
Jerry Mitchell’s direction doubles down on spectacle in the hope it will supply the excitement the music never quite finds. Catwalk sequences employ rolling LED arches, strobes and roving photographers who leap into the aisles, yet the choreography beneath the dazzle is traffic-management rather than storytelling. Models step, pose and pivot with clinical precision but little dramatic escalation. Even the Met Gala staircase, rolled out with the fanfare of a biblical revelation, feels oddly under-populated once the ensemble is arranged in its final tableau.
Georgie Buckland sings Andy with clean pop phrasing yet rarely burrows into the character’s crisis of conscience. Her transformation from cardigan-swaddled graduate to Runway power-player takes place almost entirely through costume swaps rather than acting. The pivotal hotel-room confrontation should pulse with conflict but lands more as a ticking-off from a weary mentor.
The evening belongs to Vanessa Williams, who arrives onstage (via lift) with calm command and controls the Dominion’s cavernous space with the rake of an eyebrow. Her Miranda Priestly finesses the iconic put-downs rather than detonating them. Amy Di Bartolomeo matches that authority with an Emily who fires off sarcasm like sniper rounds. Were the entire company pitched at their level, the production might find the acid bite the material demands.
Design offers intermittent jolts of fashion-week luxury. Miranda’s crimson cape is magnificent. But the rest of the wardrobe lapses into garments that would not look out of place in a high-street window, undermining the story’s insistence that we are gazing upon haute couture excess.
Familiar lines from the film drop like crowd-pleasing breadcrumbs, rewarded each time by a ripple of recognition from the audience, yet any hope of deeper investigation into power imbalance, workplace identity or quiet quitting quickly dissolves in favour of another song cue. The fashion industry is riper than ever for satire about sustainability, diversity and influencer culture, but the musical remains content to retread old jokes about cerulean jumpers and grilled-cheese boyfriends.
In the final reckoning the show earns two stars, rescued from utter mediocrity by Williams’s poised gravitas and Di Bartolomeo’s comic dynamite. Their performances hint at the sharper, edgier musical hiding in the seams, a production that might one day drop the reverence and commission a score bold enough to strut on its own terms. But for now, unless you’re a massive fan of the film, it’s one to avoid.
The Devil Wears Prada is at the Dominion Theatre until 3 January 2026
Daniel Barnett practises from Outer Temple Chambers and presents the legal hour on LBC radio.
You’ve seen the film, right? This is the (pretty awful) musical version of the (fairly decent) film of the (I haven’t actually read it) novel.
It opens in the offices of Runway magazine, where journalism graduate Andy Sachs stumbles into a post as second assistant to Miranda Priestly, fashion’s unflinching high priestess. Lattes, hostile glares from first assistant Emily and impossible deadlines are pretty much all you see in the first half. In the second half, Andy discovers a betrayal, chooses loyalty to her editor over her own career advancement, then recoils at the cost and walks away from the gilded world she has briefly conquered. It is the same arc the film laid out 19 years ago, rendered here with less nuance and more volume.
What lets the show down first is Elton John’s score. The tunes arrive in glossy packaging but play like variations of each other. ‘Dress Your Way Up’ is serviceable but indistinct, ‘Mirror Mirror’ borrows its propulsion from any number of mid-tempo pop ballads, and the power-anthems assigned to Miranda Priestly never vault beyond predictable chord lifts. A production with this budget should produce at least one song that asserts itself as part of musical theatre’s shared vocabulary. But we leave humming nothing.
Jerry Mitchell’s direction doubles down on spectacle in the hope it will supply the excitement the music never quite finds. Catwalk sequences employ rolling LED arches, strobes and roving photographers who leap into the aisles, yet the choreography beneath the dazzle is traffic-management rather than storytelling. Models step, pose and pivot with clinical precision but little dramatic escalation. Even the Met Gala staircase, rolled out with the fanfare of a biblical revelation, feels oddly under-populated once the ensemble is arranged in its final tableau.
Georgie Buckland sings Andy with clean pop phrasing yet rarely burrows into the character’s crisis of conscience. Her transformation from cardigan-swaddled graduate to Runway power-player takes place almost entirely through costume swaps rather than acting. The pivotal hotel-room confrontation should pulse with conflict but lands more as a ticking-off from a weary mentor.
The evening belongs to Vanessa Williams, who arrives onstage (via lift) with calm command and controls the Dominion’s cavernous space with the rake of an eyebrow. Her Miranda Priestly finesses the iconic put-downs rather than detonating them. Amy Di Bartolomeo matches that authority with an Emily who fires off sarcasm like sniper rounds. Were the entire company pitched at their level, the production might find the acid bite the material demands.
Design offers intermittent jolts of fashion-week luxury. Miranda’s crimson cape is magnificent. But the rest of the wardrobe lapses into garments that would not look out of place in a high-street window, undermining the story’s insistence that we are gazing upon haute couture excess.
Familiar lines from the film drop like crowd-pleasing breadcrumbs, rewarded each time by a ripple of recognition from the audience, yet any hope of deeper investigation into power imbalance, workplace identity or quiet quitting quickly dissolves in favour of another song cue. The fashion industry is riper than ever for satire about sustainability, diversity and influencer culture, but the musical remains content to retread old jokes about cerulean jumpers and grilled-cheese boyfriends.
In the final reckoning the show earns two stars, rescued from utter mediocrity by Williams’s poised gravitas and Di Bartolomeo’s comic dynamite. Their performances hint at the sharper, edgier musical hiding in the seams, a production that might one day drop the reverence and commission a score bold enough to strut on its own terms. But for now, unless you’re a massive fan of the film, it’s one to avoid.
The Devil Wears Prada is at the Dominion Theatre until 3 January 2026
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Review by Stephen Cragg KC
