THEATRE TURNED ALL THE WAY UP

There are moments in the theatre when everything converges: writing, performance, design, direction, and something indefinable that transforms craft into revelation. David Adjmi’s Stereophonic, now blazing through the Duke of York’s Theatre, is precisely such a moment. This isn’t simply 2024’s finest American play; it’s a seismic shift in what theater can accomplish when it stops apologizing for its ambitions.

Cast of Stereophonic

Ten years Adjmi spent wrestling this beast into existence, and you feel every hour of that obsession burning through the Duke of York’s walls. The result pulses with the lived-in authenticity of someone who understands that great art emerges from the wreckage of human relationships, not despite it. Set in a Sausalito recording studio circa 1976, Stereophonic drops us into the eye of a creative hurricane where five musicians tear each other apart in service of creating what we know will become one of rock’s most enduring masterpieces.

Stereophonic

The play offers a barely veiled semi-fictional glimpse into the tempestuous creation of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors album, that towering achievement born from romantic carnage and pharmaceutical excess. Adjmi has crafted something far more ambitious than biographical theater: he’s excavated the universal DNA of artistic collaboration at its most volatile. The fictional band’s struggles mirror those legendary Rumors sessions with uncanny precision, yet the play transcends mere recreation to become something entirely its own.

Jack Riddiford and Lucy Karczewski

Daniel Aukin’s direction operates like a master sound engineer, balancing intimate whispers against explosive confrontations with such precision that three hours collapse into what feels like minutes. David Zinn’s studio set doesn’t just evoke 1976; it resurrects it with forensic accuracy. The authentic vintage recording equipment doesn’t merely serve as decoration but as living instruments that seem to breathe with the music being created.

Jack Riddiford

The casting achieves that rarest theatrical magic where individual performances dissolve into collective consciousness. Three original Broadway cast members anchor the production: Andrew R. Butler’s Charlie provides comic relief as the on-the-spectrum assistant sound engineer, while Eli Gelb’s Grover navigates the pressures of being the main recording engineer with both competence and growing disillusionment. Chris Stack’s Simon serves as the band’s drummer and unofficial manager, attempting to hold everything together with weary wisdom.

Lucy Karczewski, Nia Towle, Jack Riddiford

The new London cast members prove equally essential. Jack Riddiford channels Lindsay Buckingham’s manic intensity as Peter, the controlling guitarist and producer whose perfectionism drives the creative process and everyone around him to distraction. Lucy Karczewski captures that specific Stevie Nicks mysticism as Diana, the lead vocalist and tambourine player whose confidence grows as she discovers her own songwriting power. Zachary Hart’s Reg and Nia Towle’s Holly complete the ensemble as the volatile married couple, with Reg as the troubled bass player and Holly as the keyboardist trying to hold their relationship together.

Lucy Karczewski

Will Butler’s original songs elevate Stereophonic from impressive to transcendent. Butler understands seventies rock not as nostalgia but as living language, crafting songs that sound authentically period while serving the play’s dramatic architecture. These aren’t pastiche pieces but genuine compositions that could have emerged from those actual Rumors sessions, each one advancing character and story while standing as compelling music in its own right.

Nia Towle, Lucy Karczewski, Jack Riddiford (back)

The play’s 3-hour-and-fifteen-minute marathon length becomes its secret weapon. Like the album these fictional musicians struggle to complete, Stereophonic gains power through accumulation. We don’t observe the creative process; we endure it alongside these characters, sharing their breakthroughs and breakdowns until their victories feel personal. By the explosive final act, we’ve invested so completely in their artistic journey that every chord change carries emotional weight.

Nia Towle

Adjmi has achieved something remarkable here: a play that functions as music, with overlapping dialogue creating polyphonic rhythms that mirror the songs being crafted onstage. The writing operates on multiple frequencies simultaneously, examining artistic collaboration, romantic destruction, and the specific madness of mid-seventies rock while remaining utterly human in its focus.

Cast of Stereophonic

The play’s exploration of the Rumors sessions feels particularly resonant now. That album, created while its makers’ personal lives imploded spectacularly, somehow transformed private anguish into universal catharsis. Adjmi understands that the most enduring art often emerges from the worst possible circumstances, when artists have nothing left to lose and everything to prove.

Cast of Stereophonic

This production confirms something vital about live performance in our digital age. While streaming services deliver music instantly and perfectly, theatre offers something irreplaceable: the messy, unrepeatable alchemy of human beings creating art together in real time. Stereophonic celebrates that messiness while demonstrating its necessity. The greatest albums, like the greatest plays, emerge from the beautiful collision of incompatible personalities united by shared obsession.

Cast of Stereophonic

Don’t mistake this for mere nostalgia. Stereophonic uses the seventies as a lens to examine timeless questions about art, ambition, and the price we pay for both. In our current moment of isolated creation and digital perfection, Adjmi reminds us that the most vital music emerges from the friction between flawed humans pursuing impossible dreams.

Cast of Stereophonic

Stereophonic isn’t just essential theatre; it’s essential experience. Like the mythical album at its center, it achieves that rarest of accomplishments: becoming the very thing it seeks to examine.

Cast of Stereophonic

photos by Marc Brenner

Zachary Hart

Stereophonic
Duke of York’s Theatre, St Martin’s Lane
ends on 22 November, 2025
for tickets (starting at £25). visit Stereophonic West End