Writer & Composr | Theo Jamieson
Co-Creator | Adam Lenson
CREATIVE TEAM
Director | Adam Lenson
Musical Director | Ben Kubiak
Set Design | Libby Todd
Costume Design | Eleanor Bull
Sound Design | Kelsh Buckman-Drage
Lighting Design | Ben Jacobs
Video Design | Adam Lenson
Associate Video Design | Jonathan Strutt
Assistant Lighting Designer | Nell Gollege
CAST
Poppy Gilbert
Stuart Thompson
Rupert Young
Gina Back
Simbi Akande
VENUE
Southwark Playhouse Borough
DATES
April - May 2026
SYNOPSIS
“Could you build me a distant lighthouse, with you the light to guide me home?”
Originally developed in 2025 by the National Theatre, FLYBY is a captivating and heartfelt new musical fusing an exhilarating love story with the vastness of space.
When astronaut Daniel steals a spacecraft and vanishes into space, he leaves behind Emily – a fiercely intelligent documentary film maker – and their complicated past. Through flashbacks and space logs, this captivating new musical answers why he left.
Starring Poppy Gilbert (‘My Oxford Year’ (Netflix), ‘The Other Bennett Sister ‘(BBC)), Stuart Thompson (‘SAS: Rogue Heroes’ (BBC), ‘Radiant Boy’ (Southwark Playhouse Borough)), Gina Beck (‘Guys & Dolls’, ‘Wicked’), Rupert Young (‘Dear Evan Hansen’, ‘Bridgerton’ (Netflix)), and Simbi Akande (‘Hamilton’, ‘Light in the Piazza’).
This love story shifts between past and present, uncovering the tangled forces that drove Daniel to leave; Daniel and Emily’s passionate, combustible relationship; his growing psychological unravelling; and Emily’s struggle to define herself amid talent, ambition, and moral ambiguity.
FLYBY is a musical story about the magnetism of desire, the inescapable gravity between two people, and their need to feel deeply – sometimes recklessly – alive.
Written by Theo Jamieson (RSC) directed and created with Adam Lenson (‘Cable Street’), FLYBY has its world premiere at Southwark Playhouse Borough for 6 weeks only.
