World’s Greatest Lover is a new musical that has a very flimsy premise – and it absolutely knows that, and it also completely leans into that fact.

Romeo, Cyrano de Bergerac, the Marquis de Sade and Casanova have all been summoned to participate in a concert in order to ‘save love’. That’s it – that’s the entire plot, and it’s been teased out into a 60 minute running time that, somehow, never drags. It helps that the cast seems to be having an immense amount of fun.

Once we’ve got over some initial ego-fighting about who is leading the concert, we begin to find out more about each of our four men. There’s not a great deal new here, but it’s been put together very nicely. Romeo is all blustering 14 year old teenager. Cyrano is all nervousness and romantic disaster personified. Casanova wafts around like he’s just here until he gets a better offer. De Sade is a vision of darkness, but somehow also channeling Olly Alexander?

Just as some sort of accord seems to have been reached, the foursome are joined by Saint Valentine. Who is in mortal danger if Love cannot be Saved. Apparently, Love is in danger of disappearing, unless something is done by these four men who represent different ideals of love.

From here on, it’s a song and dance fest, and some low-level philosophising about the nature of love, romance, and soul-mates. A volunteer is recruited from the audience to be sung to, and looks suitably awed / embarrassed by the occurrence.

This is a musical, and the songs come thick and fast. They’re pretty much all forgettable, but then they have been written by two people who wrote Luxembourg’s 2025 Eurovision entry (no, we couldn’t tell you what it was either). Still, there’s nothing offensive here, and the audience were clearly having a great time.

We were concerned that this was all heading for being exceptionally hetero-normative, but that concern is avoided in the final moments of the show, as de Sade provides a message that’s supportive of queer love, and also kink positive. We could have done with more of that throughout the show.

This is a popcorn-tastic, cheesy-as-you-like new musical, and we wouldn’t be surprised if a slightly longer version was heading for an Off-Broadway run. It may not be the world’s greatest musical, but it’s a fun summer fling.