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Richard Hawley: ‘If I stopped what I’m doing the songs would still come’

On a tour of his home city that begins ‘at the crack of midday’, the singer discusses his new album, how his musical, Standing at the Sky’s Edge, has hit a nerve, and his main hope for Keir Starmer

From the substation, we pretzel into his manager’s Mini and head into the city, past the Salvation Army Citadel, where Hawley used to shop for secondhand clothes, on to Marmadukes, a chichi cafe opposite the Catholic cathedral. The action follows three generations of residents in one Park Hill flat, from the wide-eyed hope of the 1960s, through the economic crash of the 1980s, up to recent years when the Grade II-listed brutalist development has once again become a desirable place to live. The show, which ingeniously weaves upward mobility, immigration and gentrification, has been a smash: it started life at th e Sheffield Crucible in 2019, before being restaged last year at the National Theatre, where it won two Olivier awards (for best new musical and for best original score or new orchestrations).

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