A little bit of Broadway magic heads to the Edinburgh Fringe this August when Simone Genatt and Marc Routh, founders of the Broadway International Group, bring the World Premiere of their exciting new musical, World’s Greatest Lover, to the Pleasance Courtyard.
From 31 July to 24 August, World’s Greatest Lover will find four of literature’s most charismatic lovers, flirting and fighting as they attempt to answer the question; What is love? From the conniving Casanova to the star-crossed Romeo, the clandestine Cyrano de Bergerac to the deadly Marquis de Sade, the four famous romantics embark on a quest to discover the true meaning of love.
Directed and choreographed by Emmy Award-winning Joshua Bergasse, with music and lyrics by Julien Salvia and Ludovic Alexandre Vidal, the production is the realisation of a 10 year dream for Routh and Gennat, a dream that finally became a reality in 2022 when they commissioned the work… two years later, World’s Greatest Lover was delivered.
“The idea for the story was born out of the darkness of the pandemic years”, reveals Genatt. “Mark and I came out of Covid thinking, ‘It is critical that we laugh and we love now because the world has become such a lonely, dark place’. That was when we decided our new show would be about lovers, global lovers. Then we brainstormed with our composer, lyricist and authors and we came up with this idea – laughter and love out of a crisis.”
The genesis of the production had actually happened almost a decade before, when one of their earlier shows proved an international smash. Routh takes up the story, “One of our most successful productions is a concert-style musical called, Altar Boys, it is the perfect vehicle for former K-Pop and boyband stars. We kept receiving requests to do a follow up show, so we commissioned the really talented French pop/theatre composers, Julien Salvia and Ludovic Alexandre-Vidal, to write this piece. When they delivered the first draft last year, we thought, ‘Wow! This is really great. It is going to be a work of art.”
Genatt adds, “Very rarely do we say that, but for 10 years this show had been in the back of our minds. We specialise in small, successful musicals that could play the West End or Broadway but also find their place with local stars. And we knew that’s what we had here. So we did a couple of closed workshops in New York for our staff. Afterwards we looked at each other and said, ‘Oh, we definitely have something, let’s do this.’ Then simultaneously we agreed, ‘Edinburgh Fringe’, our favourite place in the world.”
“So World’s Greatest Lover will get its World Premiere in Edinburgh,” beams Routh, revealing how they whittled history’s many great lovers down just four. “In the show we actually have a song that addresses those that aren’t in the show. What happens is this, you have Romeo, Cyrano, the Marquis de Sade, and Casanova… but there’s a fifth character. No one knows who he is, so they are trying to figure it out, ticking off all the great lovers throughout history as they do.”
To discover just who the fifth character is, you’ll have to see the show.
Routh continues, “We settled on the four lovers we did because they are iconic. Everyone knows them and what they represent. If you go into the story on a slightly deeper level, however, you have four very different points of view about love, and about how to save love.
“Each of these four guys have their own particular point of view. They’re blind to any other way of viewing the world, and that’s really a metaphor for the time we’re living in, where people are in their own lane and don’t really look beyond it; they don’t have a great understanding of others’ points of view.
“Of course, over the course of the show, they start to listen to each other and in the end realise it really takes the charisma of Romeo, the passion of Casanova, the poetry of Cyrano and a little bit of the danger coming from the Marquis de Sade to make the best version of love. Any one of these four elements in isolation is really not as good as all of them together.”
World’s Greatest Lover stars Rickens Anantua, Jordon Bolden, Daniel DiPinto, Sam Hyre and Will Ingram, all of whom were chosen from more than 500 hopefuls who auditioned for the production.
Genatt recalls, “We had a pretty extensive audition period to find these five. They really had to be put through their paces – singing, dancing, acting. All five are super talented triple threats.”
Routh elaborates, “In boybands, for the most part you have one lead singer on a number with everybody else supporting them. In this, we do that too as we cycle through each of the lover’s philosophies, but we also have some wonderful duets and quartets. It’s a great mix of songs. After seeing the show, everyone will be talking about love.”
Genatt adds, “Like all boybands, the cast quickly bonded becoming a close team. They’re all handsome and they definitely work like a boyband; there’s an enormous amount of choreography and harmonies, it’s a real ensemble piece.”
A final question, and it’s perhaps the obvious one, brings laughter from both producers, who recently celebrated their 30th Anniversary working together, to which lover do they themself relate the most?
Without hesitation Genatt admits, “I would say Casanova, because he is handsome and funny and swashbuckling.”
“I can really relate to Cyrano, he has the poetry but also stands back and doesn’t let himself go, so that’s like in Simone’s and my relationship…” offers Routh.
“That’s exactly our personalities,” Genatt laughs, “We’ve picked the lovers that reflect our personalities, how funny is that?”
World’s Greatest Lover runs at the Pleasance Courtyard 31 July-24 August 2025, 6pm, tickets here.
This feature was commissioned for syndication by the Broadway International Group
