Amy Winehouse musical in development for West End

Amy Winehouse musical in development for West End

The full report

A musical based on Amy Winehouse is in development for London’s West End, according to Variety. The project is still in early stages with Catherine Schreiber, a Tony award-winning producer, attached to the project. Casting is reported to currently be under way.

Mitch Winehouse, the late musician’s father, is also said to be involved with the show, indicating that it will probably feature her most loved songs. The Guardian has approached Amy Winehouse’s record label for comment.

This week, the 20th anniversary of her landmark album Back to Black was celebrated with a tribute concert at London’s Roundhouse featuring performances by Jorja Smith, Mark Ronson, Lianne La Havas and Corinne Bailey Rae. “Back to Black remains a miraculous set of modern love songs in vintage clothing,” wrote the Guardian’s Dorian Lynskey, adding that “re-enactments can be limiting”.

On 23 October, an expanded reissue of Back to Black will be released, including four unreleased demos, B-sides and a live album recording at Amsterdam’s Paradiso in 2007. Mitch Winehouse has hinted at the possibility of a musical based on the singer over the years. “A musical celebrating her life and music is being talked about for the near future,” he said in a 2017 interview.

That is now set to come to fruition, joining the multiple posthumous music releases, films and TV specials that have been released since Winehouse’s death in 2011, aged 27. In 2011, the rarities collection Lioness was received as a “flawed memorial for a flawed star”, while Sam Taylor-Johnson’s 2024 biopic of the musician was slammed as a “grotesque insult” by the Guardian’s Laura Snapes.

Meanwhile, Asif Kapadia’s 2015 documentary about the singer won the best documentary Oscar, and was praised by the Guardian as “an intimate and passionate tribute, tracing the awful trajectory of her celebrity destiny”.

Mitch Winehouse has stated that he wants to do something that remembers Amy for what she was; there’s so much more to her than just the drugs and the alcohol.”