Visiting the ‘Re:Imagining Musicals’ exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum, I was unsure whether I would recognise the 'iconic musicals' or 'modern classics' it pledged to celebrate, preparing for bemusement at ancient cabarets before my birth, and only faint recognition of recent productions through hearing their songs on TikTok.

As a rare breed of English student not (yet) sucked into selling my soul to the ADC and whose most recent encounters with musical theatre were mediated through Varsity reviews I edited, my primary memories of musicals belong to childhood. Somewhere in the midst of being old enough to be taken to ‘adult’ theatre (think Shakespeare, T.S Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’, and other seemingly endless soliloquies), I lost touch with the shows I used to love trekking to the West End to watch (and the songs I would sing on repeat for weeks after, to the absolute joy of everyone in my household).

“Surrounded by posters, set models, press books and cast recordings of various iterations of The Wizard of Oz, I was both transported to being eleven”

Fortunately, upon arrival I was greeted by a familiar sight: Scar’s costume from the original 1994 production of The Lion King, an (albeit intimidating) harbinger of memories from attending the show on a primary school trip: my awe at the intricate costumes, glee at hearing my favourite Disney songs, and falling into fits of giggles after our coach drove away from the Lyceum Theatre without our headteacher. Good times.

The next costume to trigger a wave of nostalgia was the raven-like figure of Elphaba. Surrounded by posters, set models, press books and cast recordings of various iterations of The Wizard of Oz, I was both transported to being eleven, surprised by my best friend with Wicked tickets, and eight again, weeping with joy during Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 2011 adaptation after investing my Saturday evenings in the prospective Dorothys and hopeful Totos on talent-search TV series Over the Rainbow. Interspersed with posters from The Wiz (1974) - “one of the first large-scale Broadway shows to feature an all-Black cast” - the display demonstrated the story’s endless, spiralling propagation of a variety of shows, from those exploring the possibility of being born evil to celebrating African-American culture.

While musicals might seem to compete with the silver screen for our attention, the exhibition embraced their co-dependence, recognising the roots of shows like Bend It Like Beckham, Hairspray and Moulin Rouge. Also tracing shows such as Mamma Mia, West Side Story and Annie into cinemas, many of the quirks and qualities of the original cast were still evident, including Mrs Hannigan’s trademark whistle and gin-swigging, improvised by Dorothy Loudon in rehearsals in 1976. Seeing the first Grizabella’s shoes nevertheless reminded me of Cats’ far less celebrated 2019 film adaptation, still a sore memory for a staunch Taylor Swift fan.

“Revelations of how little we truly know about our favourite shows lay around every corner”

Despite their cemented cultural influence, revelations of how little we truly know about our favourite shows lay around every corner. A nerd to my core, my favourite discovery was that a typesetting error in the poem ‘Little Orphan Annie’, about real orphan Mary Alice ‘Allie’ Smith, managed to inspire the 1924 comic strip from which the iconic protagonist Annie was born.

Nevertheless, while a musicals exhibition was the last place I imagined I’d first encounter it, the literary peak of the day was stumbling upon Shakespeare’s first folio. Accompanying a model of Juliet’s Parisian abode in & Juliet, it displayed the success with which the canon has been brought into contemporary conversations about misogyny. But while the nearby puff sleeves of Catherine of Aragon in Cambridge-born SIX suggested that musicals’ future lies in reinventing history, stagecraft’s own past of prejudice was not erased. Prompt-books and posters traced the history of musical Hot Mikado, from Gilbert and Sullivan’s original 1885 production using yellowface to satirise English colonialism through a Japanese lens, to the various productions which have since struggled to reclaim this narrative while confronting the racism at its core.

While recognising their cementing of stereotypes, the exhibition equally celebrated their crucial fluidity, noting a history of gender-bending performances from Danny La Rue’s Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly! (1984) to Paul O’Grady’s Miss Hannigan in Annie (1998). A pair of bejewelled boots from Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (2017), a biopic of British schoolboy and drag queen Jamie Campbell, reminded me that musicals remain a space for self-expression for many. Noting this as we passed The Rocky Horror Picture Show programme, I prompted my mum’s reminiscence of how she spray painted her hair black to attend the musical with fifty other people at uni. Her tale of dressing up in fishnets, suspenders and mini skirts - “even the guys” - to descend upon the theatre, sing along and practically put on the show themselves reminded me of the heart and soul students throw into Cambridge theatre. However, I was surprised to discover no Camdram history of the feat - maybe next year?

While the exhibition’s large scale displays of the breathtaking embroidery, intricate illustrations and complex stage structures foregrounded the ingenuity of those behind the scenes, the scavenger hunt-style scattering of tiny models of costume artists, musicians, and set designers hard at work on miniature dresses, pianos and ladders reinforced the reminder that often the most important roles are played by those we barely spot behind the curtain.

Exiting the V&A’s stretching corridors left me with an overwhelming sense of awe at musicals’ endless designing, performing, adapting, recreating, altering and transforming, from stage to screen or page to stage and everything in between. Whether taking on the songs of everyone’s favourite Swedish band or addressing the tensions of the Vietnam War, inspiring you to confidently express your identity or simply giving you a laugh at a difficult time, musicals’ multiple reincarnations keep them constantly returning to our lives to speak to us in new, relevant ways. Poignant time capsules of what mattered to us in single moments of our lives, it’s not just the catchiness of their songs which ensures they stay with us.

‘Re:Imagining Musicals’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum is open until the 4th February. Admission is free.