The situation for Nick Bright (Daniel Lapaine) is pretty desperate. He is a banker who when riding in his boss’s car was kidnapped by an Islamist extremist group. He is being held as a prisoner manacled in a breeze block cell and 10 million dollars is demanded as his ransom. We hear about the beheading fate of a Western journalist and the graphic video they released.
Be More Chill the musical has been a phenomenon on Broadway after Ned Vizzini's "young adult novel" captured the imagination of American teenagers in New Jersey and beyond. For a show to be sold out in the States before it opens is remarkable. So Be More Chill comes to London with an impressive amount of downloads on Spotify and the like. There have been 350 million streams of the original cast recording.
We hear about the precarious life of a musician dependent on patronage and the whims of the German nobility. We hear Bach's acerbic wit and cut to his conducting a choir where we realise he is not just a perfectionist, he has low levels of tolerance. We see he has a bad temper and is stubborn, so will fall out with those he depends on financially and get into petty quarrels. We also appreciate the humour of Bach's witty lines and put downs.