It’s tempting to imagine that spinning off a musical from a cherished Hollywood hit is as close to a sure-fire thing you can get. 

Just hire top songwriting and stage effects teams and press start, right?

Not so, says John Rando, director of Back to the Future the Musical.

“If the idea doesn’t have heart, you don’t have anything,” he tells Limelight.

“Back to the Future was special as a movie in its time because under all that time travel stuff, it’s a story about fathers and sons, about reaching back to met the person before they become mom and dad, and seeing if you get along, see the world in the same way. That’s why it all works.”

Back to the Future – the Musical. Image supplied

Rando is in Sydney preparing the ground for the Australian premiere of Back to the Future the Musical. There’s nothing he doesn’t know about the show, having bought it to life in Manchester in the UK in 2020. Post-pandemic, it transferred to the West End in 2021, where it broke box office records for London’s Adelphi Theatre and won...