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Lynette Linton on The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, Representation and British Theatre
When director Lynette Linton is watching her production of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind at @sohoplace the thing she enjoys most is watching the rapt faces of the 10-year-olds and young people in the audience. Produced by the RSC, whose previous long-running musical hits include Les Misérables and Matilda The Musical, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a musical written by Tim Sutton and Richy Hughes based on the true story of Malawian teenager William Kamkwamba, who hit upon the idea of building a wind turbine to save his village from famine. Kamkwamba co-wrote a book about his experience, and Chiwetel Ejiofor directed a film version in 2019. But the musical brings new life as well as African rhythms, puppetry, dancing and real joy to this story of a village on the brink of disaster and the boy whose ingenuity and determination averted catastrophe. “It’s such an inspiring story,” says Linton, who, when we speak, is about to hop on a plane to New York to remount her staging of Benedict Lombe’s Shifters, which she first staged at the Bush in 2024 and which transferred into the West End. Shifters was just one of a blinding series of new plays premiered at the Bush when Linton was artistic director there. Now as a freelancer, when she accepts a directing job, she asks herself a series of questions: 'Why am I doing this?' What's it for? How do I relate to it artistically? And why do I want to tell this story?” But with The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind there was no hesitation. “I just knew this was a story which would inspire Black children, so I wanted to do it.” Linton, best known for redefining the Bush and staging a string of meaty dramas at the National Theatre and in the West End, including Blues for an Alabama Sky, Intimate Apparel and Sweat, is a massive musical nut (‘I love them all from Chicago to Hamilton) and it might surprise some that she would like nothing more than a shot at High School Musical. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is her first foray into musicals, but she hopes it won’t be her last. “It was daunting because I’d never done it before, and I’m a very text- and character-led director, so a musical felt like quite a leap. But I wasn’t alone. I had a team of amazing human beings and creatives and a cast who really wanted to collaborate, so I just dove in. Sometimes when you are directing, you just have to jump in the water and start swimming so that’s what I did.” Although in real life Linton can’t actually swim. Just diving in is what Linton has always done. When Josie Rourke, then artistic director of the Donmar, put Lynn Nottage’s rust belt drama Sweat—the play which was hailed as explaining Trump’s 2016 electoral success—in Linton’s hands, it might have seemed like a high-stakes risk for the exalted boutique theatre and the still largely unknown young director. But Linton’s expansive, confident staging swept the show into the West End and Linton into the rising star firmament. The young woman who was raised in Leytonstone and loved EastEnders but knew little about theatre until she stumbled into the Theatre Royal Stratford East, initially thinking she might want to be a writer, soon took over the Bush. With associate artistic director Daniel Bailey, she transformed it into a powerhouse of contemporary writing, effortlessly disrupting the canon with brilliant new plays, often written by Black and Asian writers, including High Table, Red Pitch and Shifters. They were heady times, and rumour has it that Linton came close to getting the National Theatre top job.
30 Jun, 2026 | By Lyn Gardner
