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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Entertainment
Cassie Tongue

Back to the Future: The Musical review – faithful adaptation for the diehard fans

Marty McFly Bob Gale Alan Silvestri Michael J Fox Roger Bart
Back to the Future: The Musical is ‘a commercial love letter that dodges risk to give you the smoothest possible ride back to your past’.
Back to the Future: The Musical is ‘a commercial love letter that dodges risk to give you the smoothest possible ride back to your past’. Photograph: Daniel Boud

If you’ve never seen Back to the Future – the 1985 sci-fi comedy by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, with its time-travelling DeLorean, mad scientist and plot to stop yourself from never being born – you should probably skip this musical. It’s fun and easy to follow, but casual visitors may feel they’re missing something.

This is because we’re never taken below the surface. The film has real heart underneath all the irreverent misadventures of teenager Marty McFly (Michael J Fox originally, Axel Duffy here) and Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd, now Roger Bart). Moments after Doc first achieves time travel, Marty is flung back to 1955. He crashes his parents’ meet-cute and risks being erased. (His mother falls for Marty instead – don’t think too hard about it.)

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