Paul and Prue, is that you? No, in fact, it’s Phil Hollinghurst and Pam Lee, the new stars of The Great British Bake Off Musical. After 13 years, many soggy bottoms and a few Baked Alaska-related dramas, the nation’s favourite baking show has been given the all-singing, all-dancing treatment. Opening in the West End next week, it’s the biggest new British musical of the year and plans to capture that Bake Off spirit, from the underdog stories we root for to the tragedy of a tricky technical.
But Bake Off? A musical? Seriously? The show’s cast is already accustomed to raised eyebrows. “My reaction was, as I think a lot of people’s was, ‘How’s that gonna work?’ actor Haydn Gwynne, who plays judge Pam, tells me from rehearsals, furrowing her brow. John Owen-Jones, playing Phil, felt the same. “I’m like, ‘Really? A Bake Off musical?’”. The show had an early run in Cheltenham last year, and co-writer Pippa Cleary sensed a similar audience scepticism. “I think they were expecting, ‘Oh, I’ll just come in and have a bit of a drunken night out with the girls’ and that’s really not what we wanted to do,” she tells me.
