Hear the people sing! Musicals are back – and they’re retuned for a new generation

We all had our ways to cope with isolation. For me, it was music from Evita, Hamilton, and more. Now as UK venues reopen, a flood of diverse, fresh shows and revivals are due on stage and screen

Hamilton was the perfect peppy soundtrack to a gloomy mid-February weekend spent painting the hall, Evita injected drama into wet Tuesdays, Jesus Christ Superstar became a balm in anxious times, and walks around wintry Hackney marshes were spent with Willy Russell's ill-fated Blood Brothers.

In a discombobulating, locked-down year when, if you were very lucky, days melded into one, musical soundtracks conjured harmonious, air-punching highs and fictional, finite lows. They felt cathartic and comforting.