Many of us outside the United States will have heard of J. Edgar Hoover and his role as head of the FBI, but few of us know much more than that. Hoover was the longest-serving director of the FBI and for those 37 years, he worked with presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. However, links to crime, the utilisation of nefarious methods to achieve his goals, and that he was (very likely to have been) a closeted gay man who victimised other gay men are what have come to be his enduring legacy.

To set the story ‘straight’, well, to provide a new, comedic, musical level of insight is ‘Here Comes J. Edgar!’ from Harry Shearer (The Simpsons; This Is Spinal Tap), Tom Leopold (Seinfeld; Cheers; Will & Grace), and Peter Matz (who’d worked with Barbra Streisand and Carol Burnett).

The musical opens with J. Edgar on his deathbed, visited by his younger self, hilariously played by Jess Pratley, to lead us back to his early days at school. There we see the early seeds of his manipulative nature used to blackmail his principal. The show then takes us through the rest of us life to bring us back to the starting point.

The wickedly funny jokes come thick and fast, and so do the musical numbers that wonderfully evoke the period.  Among the numerous references to the golden age of Hollywood, there are some fun musical references; one particular nod to West Side Story in the second half caused an audible ripple of recognition to sweep the audience.

With the comedy, there’s a more serious commentary here about how queer people have been kept in the closet and how utterly damaging it is, and how it feels even more of a betrayal when some among us do it to ourselves. Sadly, this self-destruction still happens in 2026.

Our lead as J. Edgar is Bryan Batt, who played Sal in ‘Mad Men’ and recently appeared in Marco Calvani’s ‘High Tide’ (my first experience of Bryan was as the scene-stealing Darius in  ‘Jeffrey’ in 1995).  Aside from Bryan as J. Edgar, Hugo Bolton is his ‘Lifetime Assistant’ Clyde Tolson and Marc Elliott is reporter Walter Winchell.

Bryan and Hugo as J. Edgar and Clyde have great chemistry and make for a charismatic and believable secret couple with some genuinely heartfelt moments that move quickly into hilarity. It’s difficult to give such an iconic villain as J. Edgar the pathos required to carry the audience with him, but Bryan does it superbly.

The rest of the cast take on multiple roles, each convincingly played as individuals rather than merely showing up as a person with a different hat and accent. Overall, I was struck by how immensely talented the cast were in this fast-paced show; their singing voices were especially impressive.

The Kings Head Theatre, where this is playing, is a relatively small space seating roughly 200 people, and the way it was used, sometimes fitting in eight or so people performing a full-on choreographed number, was ingenious. Also, the turnaround of the staging and costumes is at times breathtaking.

Seeing what has the potential to become a big musical in such an intimate space reminded me of seeing ‘Two Strangers’ at the Kiln in North London in 2023, a show that transferred to the West End, then Broadway and went on to earn eight nominations at the most recent Tony Awards. There’s no reason ‘Here Comes J. Edgar!’ couldn’t have a similar level of success.