Gary Barlow

In February 2017, Gary Barlow made his West End debut with the new musical The Girls - not on the stage, mind you, but as the musical’s composer. The famous songwriter known for his work with the hugely successful pop group Take That spent five years writing songs for a musical based on the film Calendar Girl.

In April 2015, a musical of the film Finding Neverland opened on Broadway with music by the pop star in collaboration with Eliot Kennedy, who he had previously written a number of pop songs with. Barlow was coaxed into writing songs for the show by movie mogul Harvey Weinstein in 2013, and the production made its debut at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the summer of 2014. And so the Gary Barlow musical journey began.

Gary Barlow has well and truly caught the musical bug — a BBC One talent show titled Let It Shine searched for stars to lead a stage production based around the songs of Take That, with Gary Barlow acting as a judge, helped by Dannii Minogue, Martin Kemp and Amber Riley. The show, called The Band, toured the UK, before arriving in the West End in 2018.