Michael Jibson on starring in 'This is My Family'

Olivier Award winner Michael Jibson is returning to musical theatre in a show about family at Southwark Playhouse.

For stage and screen actor Michael Jibson, nothing beats musical theatre. “As an actor it’s what gives me oxygen,” he says. “For some actors, their thing is Shakespeare or new writing, or you get film actors who always want to do a new play at the Royal Court. Not that it doesn’t interest me, but I’d do a good musical over anything else.”

Jibson’s preference for musicals has seen him star in Oliver!, Bugsy Malone, A Chorus Line, and Hamilton — for which he won an Olivier Award — but he has also graced our screens in James Graham’s TV drama Quiz (opposite his cousin-in-law Michael Sheen) and Sam Mendes’s war epic 1917, as well as parts in The Crown, Beauty and the Beast, and even the movie version of Les Misérables.

Now he is returning to his first passion at Southwark Playhouse, reuniting with writer Tim Firth on a musical about family love.

Can you tell me about your first professional theatre experience?

Oliver! was revived at the Palladium by Sam Mendes in 1994, and they were looking for boys to be in it. My mum’s friend said, “You’ve got to take the boys down.” So I went with my brother to this audition and we were cast. I vividly remember standing in the wings of the Palladium and thinking, “Wow, I’m working with amazing people like Sally Dexter and Jonathan Pryce.” I never looked back from there. It’s been a full circle experience, because I worked with Sam Mendes again in the film 1917 and we talked about the fact I’d been in Oliver! and it’s on my CV.

How did you get involved with This is My Family?

I saw it when it was originally staged in Sheffield because I was filming in Leeds and I knew Tim [Firth, the writer] because I had worked with him before on Our House. I genuinely fell in love with the show. Now it has come round again and Tim asked whether I wanted to get involved. It’s a beautiful show — it’s a chamber piece, with a seven-piece orchestra and six cast members. Tim is one of our best composers in musical theatre. Working with him again feels a bit like coming home, because I’d spent the beginning of my career playing Joe Casey in Our House. I was a boy then, and now I’m playing a dad. All the best actors’ careers are defined by the people who want to keep working with them.

What is the show about?

Nicky is a 13 year old who enters a competition in which she has to describe her family to win a holiday. She wins the dream holiday, but instead of taking us somewhere fantastic and exotic, we go on a camping trip — and it’s chaos.

The show is about family, the dynamics and the emotions, the disconnect between siblings, and mothers and sons, and fathers and daughters. It’s hilariously funny and equally heartbreaking and moving.

You have originated roles in the West End, such as Victor Creel in Stranger Things: The First Shadow and King George III in Hamilton. What have these parts meant to you?

It’s when I pinch myself. I’m by no means a famous actor, most of the time I’m jobbing and I’ve got a family to provide for. I hoped I’d be in Les Misérables one day — that was my dream. When I found theatre, my thing was listening to the cast recordings of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Lyceum.

As a Northern, working-class lad, to get to play a king was a real privilege. In America, the audience was receiving him as a funny, posh British guy, whereas in the UK, he’s a real person, we know who that royal family is. So I was able to play the stakes of how powerful he was, which leant into the satire and comedy. To stand there and sing those lyrics — I felt the eyes of British theatre on me at that moment.

What do you hope audiences take away from This is My Family?

I hope it makes people reassess what they’ve got in their lives. This show makes you realise that sometimes you just need to look at what you’ve got. I hope people turn to each other and say, “We’re alright, aren’t we?”

Book This is My Family tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

This article first appeared in the June 2025 issue of London Theatre Magazine.

Photo credit: Michael Jibson. Inset: This is My Family artwork, Stranger Things: The First Shadow, Hamilton. (Courtesy of production)