Glorious! - UK Tour Review 2026

★☆☆☆☆

The UK tour of Glorious! arrives at Derby Theatre championing the infamy of Florence Foster Jenkins, once dubbed “the world’s worst singer.” Peter Quilter’s play promises comedy drawn from an extraordinary life. But here’s the question: does notoriety automatically equal great theatre, or can even the most remarkable true story fall flat under the stage lights?

Matthew Morrison as Cosmé McMoon. Photo Credi: Chris Davies

Glorious! recounts the true story of Florence Foster Jenkins, a wealthy amateur soprano whose passion for singing was matched only by her absolute inability to hit a note in tune. Supported by her loyal pianist Cosmé McMoon, Florence pursues increasingly ambitious performances, culminating in her triumphant Carnegie Hall concert. Along the way, we meet friends and musical purists who alternately encourage, indulge, or mock her endeavours, all while Florence remains blissfully convinced of her own brilliance.

There are threads of promise here. Wendi Peters, as Florence, commits wholeheartedly to the role. Her character is a wonderful mix of Hyacinth Bucket and Petula Gordeno. Her physicality, her expressions, and her timing are all exaggerated for a big comedy performance; she clearly understands the rhythm of farce and the mechanics of performance.  Likewise, Matthew Morrison’s Cosmé McMoon brings a steadiness to his role, and there are glimpses in Act Two when his connection to Florence hints at something more meaningful beneath the surface. On paper, there should be a resonant story about friendship, delusion, and the audacity of dreams. But the production spectacularly fails to achieve this. 

For a show that runs close to two hours, Glorious! feels starved of substance. Quilter’s script seems to revolve around the same gag, “she can’t sing”, over and over again, until it loses any comedic traction. The first scene alone stretches far too long, with joke after joke about Florence’s tone-deaf performances without establishing any ounce of narrative. By the halfway point, the audience isn’t warmed up; it’s weary. In Act Two, when the show finally tries to introduce emotional stakes or a sense of character progression, it feels rushed, as though the story has nowhere to go.

Wendi Peters (Florence) and Caroline Gruber (Mrs Verrinder-Gedge). Photo Credit: Chris Davies

The dramatic thinness of this text is hard to overstate. Relationships with the ensemble characters are sketchy at best; motivations are unclear; characters feel like caricatures rather than real people. Florence’s friend Dorothy (Sioned Jones), for example, does little but egg her on, yet we’re never shown why she behaves this way. Does she genuinely care for her friend? Is she complicit in the delusion? Or is she just one of the masses mocking her? We never find out. 

Caroline Gruber’s Mrs Verrinder-Gedge shows real promise, particularly when she challenges Florence and directly confronts her inability to sing. It should be a moment of genuine tension and insight, but it’s played as though it’s building to a punchline (spoiler: it doesn’t), which drains much of its impact. The brief moment of consideration by Florence is nice, when she proclaims, “people may say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing”, but it’s a fleeting moment. Gruber also appears as an Italian maid, a character who seems to exist solely for a repetitive joke about Florence not understanding a word she says, a cheap gag that becomes rather grating.

Glorious! sets out to be a comedy, but it feels like the audience is invited to laugh at Florence, rather than laugh with her. Florence’s eccentricities are treated as cheap punchlines rather than entry points into a character study. The play also randomly suggests that Cosmé is a closeted gay man, which is dropped in as a throwaway joke rather than examined with any real sensitivity or depth, making for really shallow character work. Or perhaps laughing at someone’s sexuality is funny, and I’m the odd one out?

Ingrid Hu’s set design is simple but effective. While neither the set nor the costumes are especially lavish, they clearly evoke the play’s 1940s American setting, capturing the period's upper-class elegance and grounding the story in its world. The lighting design does its job without drawing attention to itself, functional rather than transformative.

Wendi Peters (Florence) and Sioned Jones (Dorothy). Photo Credit: Chris Davies

However, the piano, in a story about a singer and her pianist, is far too quiet, resulting in several key musical moments losing impact. It’s hard to tell if someone is singing off-key, if you can’t hear the key it’s supposed to be in! More frustrating than that is the final reveal of how Florence imagines she sounds. Instead of Peters delivering this live, the production uses a pre-recorded track while she lip-syncs. In a play centred on performance and sound, this decision feels like a missed opportunity, draining what could have been a genuinely moving and memorable moment to end the play.

Glorious! arrives aspiring to be a hilarious, heartfelt celebration of an eccentric life, but it never quite gets off the ground. There are sparks of humour and decent moments struggling beneath the surface, yet they’re overwhelmed by a thin script that can’t sustain laughter, emotion, or narrative weight for the full runtime. If you’re curious about Florence Foster Jenkins’ peculiar place in history, there’s value in learning more about the real woman. But as theatre? As storytelling? This version of her story feels like an opportunity squandered.

If nothing else, Glorious! reminds us that not every life, no matter how extraordinary, translates into great theatre. But if you’re looking for something simple, light, and a bit absurd, then go for the experience… just don’t expect it to be “glorious.”