It’s a Sin, the award-winning TV series about friendship during the 1980s Aids crisis, is to be adapted for the stage as a dance show. The new production is being developed by Rambert who had a hit in 2022 with its prequel to the TV series Peaky Blinders.
The creator of It’s a Sin, Russell T Davies, is executive producer on the new work which will be choreographed and directed by Benoit Swan Pouffer, Rambert’s artistic director. “Storytelling sits at the heart of Rambert’s mission,” said Pouffer on Thursday. “Collaborating with Russell – one of the most powerful storytellers of our time – is incredibly exciting. Together we’re exploring how dance and choreography can carry urgent, emotional narratives in a visceral way.”
Pet Shop Boys, whose 1987 single gave the TV series its title, are also serving as executive producers on the show. They said the series “compellingly presented the reality and tragedy of the Aids crisis to a mass audience” and that they were “proud to be involved as this poignant and important story is interpreted in a different medium”. The pop duo’s regular collaborators, Luke Halls Studio, will provide set and video design for a production that will blend archive material with contemporary dance. The music will be composed by Roman GianArthur, part of Janelle Monáe’s Wondaland Arts Society collective, and will evoke “the glamour, defiance and emotional intensity of 1980s queer life” according to a press statement.
The show is co-produced by Factory International and will open at its £240m venue, Aviva Studios in Manchester, at a date yet to be announced. It is then set to tour. Davies said: “It’s a Sin was such a special show for me, and it’s one of the greatest honours of my life to have the show transformed by Rambert into something new and exciting.”
The writer had previously expressed uncertainty about adapting the Channel 4 series for the stage. In 2024, three years after it first aired, he told the Radio Times that he had been encouraged to turn it into a musical. “I just wanted to move on,” he said. “I didn’t want to wallow. It was very strange, with its success – it was very hard to celebrate, because it was this enormous success and yet such a tragic true story … I just didn’t want to stay there. I thought, ‘I’ve done it’, and I felt like I’d be treading water or trying to repeat a success or almost profiting off something that’s very dark.” He acknowledged at the time that he “might go back to it one day”.
The TV series followed a group of young gay men who move to London in 1981 and find freedom and friendship, yet navigate the horror of the unfolding HIV/Aids crisis during the decade. It won best new drama at the National Television awards in 2021 and many other prizes.
Rambert, founded as a ballet company in London by Polish émigré Marie Rambert, is celebrating its centenary this year. It’s a Sin is co-produced with Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff, Capital Theatres in Edinburgh, Les Théâtres de la Ville in Luxembourg and Sadler’s Wells in London. In 2011, Sadler’s Wells presented the dance show The Most Incredible Thing which featured an original score by Pet Shop Boys.
In recent years, dance companies have had considerable success in reaching new audiences by adapting TV series as well as films. Aviva Studios opened in 2023 with Free Your Mind, a production based on The Matrix with choreography from Kenrick “H20” Sandy. This month, Northern Ballet unveiled its touring version of Gentleman Jack, based on Sally Wainwright’s hit TV series about the 19th-century lesbian diarist Anne Lister.
