A brand-new Christmas musical is quietly ticking into life — and its first full expression has been recorded at one of the most iconic studios in the world.
Clockwork Christmas is an eight-song concept album for a new musical, recorded at Abbey Road Studios with a 14-piece orchestra and featuring an impressive line-up of musical theatre performers including Kerry Ellis, Claire Moore, Lucie St. Louis, Peter Forbes, Lauren Byrne and Louis Maskell. The album marks a significant development moment for a show that is still in the process of finding its path to the stage.
The musical is an international collaboration between composer Craig Adams (Lift, Thérèse Raquin), lyricist Anton Mouzykantskii and book writer Daria Aksenova, inspired by a short story by Nobel Prize-winning German author Heinrich Böll. At its heart, Clockwork Christmas poses a deceptively simple and unsettling question: what happens when Christmas refuses to end?
Following a disastrous holiday dinner that triggers their mother Milla’s breakdown, the Lentz family discovers that the only thing keeping her stable is the nightly recreation of a flawlessly repaired, postcard-perfect Christmas. Every evening, the same ritual. The same songs. The same smiles. At first, the routine appears to heal old wounds and draw the family closer together, but the repetition soon turns dark. As the children slip away — replaced first by actors and later by mechanical clockwork dolls — the ritual becomes something far more disturbing, before ultimately leaving space for an unexpected kind of Christmas miracle.
Craig Adams’ score leans into character-driven musical theatre writing, combining rich melodic storytelling with a contemporary edge. The orchestrations, by Grigory Losenkov, bring warmth and precision to the material, while Anton Mouzykantskii’s lyrics open up intimate emotional moments across three generations of the Lentz family.
The album opens with Good Luck, Mister Goose!, sung by Claire Moore, which places a carefully laid Christmas dinner over a quietly ticking emotional time bomb. This gives way to the chaotic ensemble number Santa Franz, before shifting tone with Shortest Short Straw, a ballad of familial isolation performed by Lucie St. Louis. Lauren Byrne brings emotional clarity to Lucie’s Sunrise, a shattering song about a child prodigy encountering rejection for the first time, while Peter Forbes delivers a darker turn in Clockwork Dolls, as the Lentz father begins carving mechanical replacements for his children in a desperate attempt to preserve the ritual.
Elsewhere, Louis Maskell lends a tender sincerity to the proposal song Will You?, and lyricist Anton Mouzykantskii himself performs The Middle is Mine, an aggravated middle-child jazz waltz. The album closes with Once a Year, the lead single recently shortlisted for the Stiles and Drewe Best New Song Prize, performed by Kerry Ellis. The song marks the musical’s moment of release, as the Christmas spell finally breaks and the seasons are allowed to move forward once more.
Speaking about the project, Kerry Ellis described being part of Clockwork Christmas as “a genuine joy,” praising the writing team for creating something “magical” and highlighting the power of music to bring people together, particularly at Christmas. Lyricist and producer Anton Mouzykantskii reflected on the six-year journey behind the project, expressing hope that the album offers listeners an early glimpse into a world that “may yet develop a habit of returning.”
Produced by Mouzykantskii, with music direction by Dave Rose and engineering by Haydn Bendall, the album represents a polished and confident step in the show’s development. While no stage production has yet been announced, Clockwork Christmas offers a compelling early insight into a new musical that feels rich with theatrical potential — one that may, in time, find its way from studio to stage.
Listeners can explore the album alongside five studio-filmed music videos and further story material at Clockwork Christmas: Songs from a New Musical
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