‘This conversation’s too big for a phone call,” sings Lily Allen on her new album, West End Girl. Maybe those conversations are too big for its 14 tracks as Allen is in discussions about turning the album’s painful account of uncovering infidelity into a play. The singer has just completed a tour of theatre venues, performing West End Girl in its entirety, culminating in last weekend’s shows at the London Palladium. Those gigs give a tantalising idea of what a fully fledged stage adaptation could look like.
Allen’s semi-autobiographical album has theatre at its core – even the songs’ visualisers feature pierrot costumes and a St Martin’s Lane marquee with a tongue-in-cheek nod to The Importance of Being Earnest. The plot includes her being cast in a West End production (mirroring her assured debut in 2:22: A Ghost Story in 2021) and while she is hardly the first pop star to do theatre, it’s still refreshing to hear the line “I got the lead in a play!” on an album.
