Peaky Blinders MUSICAL is set to hit the stage in September

Tommy Shelby is set to make his stage debut this September when a Peaky Blinders dance production comes to Birmingham. 

Steven Knight, the creator of the show that follows the Shelby crime family in 1930s Birmingham has announced that Peaky Blinders: The Redemption of Thomas Shelby will open its doors in September, before going on tour across the UK in 2023. 

The show, devised with the Rambert Dance Company and choregraphed and directed by its artistic director Benoit Swan Pouffer, will dive more into the backstories of the beloved BBC’s crime drama’s characters, with a brand new cast. 

This comes after the showrunner confirmed Peaky Blinders’ sixth season will be its last, but that Tommy and his crew will come back in movie form. 

 The crime show starring Cilliam Murphy as Thomas Shelby, centre, set in 1930s’ Birmingham, will air its sixth and final season in February

Knight said his new project will be ‘dance for people who don’t usually watch dance.’ 

He added the show will give more information about the series’ characters that ‘sort of inform who they are in the television series.’ 

And he revealed the love story of Tommy Shelby and Grace Burgress will be featured in the show through dance and through narration.   

Knight said he got the idea for the dance production thanks to an episode of Peaky Blinders’ fifth season featuring Swan Lake on a ‘cold night.’

Knight explained the stage production will dive into the backstories of the show’s characters to inform their storyline on the TV show 

The stage production will feature 20 dancers from the Rambert Dance Company and a live band

‘I think the popularity of dance on television now is maybe a gamechanger in that people will see dance as not something that is for a particular section of society.’

‘If these characters are going to live on a stage, it felt like the right way to do it. Because music has always driven Peaky Blinders,’ he added.  

The show runner said he does not want to make things obscure or difficult, while Swan Pouffer said the production will be an ‘inspiring and uplifting’ dance show. 

Rambert, which is  regarded as one of the leading contemporary dance companies in the world, acknowledge it is an unusual move to collaborate with the producers of a violent TV show. 

The Rambert Dance Company said they wanted to resonate with what interests UK audiences. Pictured: the stage show’s cast with Steven knight, centre left and Rambert’s artistic director Benoit Swan Pouffer, centre right 

Kinight, centre, said he was inspired to create a dance production of Peaky Blinders by an episode from series five of the show featuring Swan Lake 

Its chief executive, Helen Shute, said the company wants to make art that resonates with audiences in the country and hoped to bring a new generations of fans to the theatre. 

The company of 20 dancers will perform on stage with a live band in the show, which will premiere at Birmingham Hippodrome in September. followed by a run at Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre in London and a national tour in 2023. 

For now, though, fans of the show will have to wait for its sixth and final season to air on TV. 

Steven said the final season will ‘go into and beyond the Second World War’ and is ‘the end of the beginning’ as he teased a future film release.

The showrunner revealed he hoped the show will be ‘dance for people who don’t usually watch dance’

For many years the creator claimed the gangster show would end with air-raid sirens over Birmingham marking the start of World War Two.   

But in an apparent U-turn, Knight has revealed the sixth series is merely the end of the narrative on the small screen and teased that the story will continue in a feature-length film.

‘It was always Britain between the wars – how the lesson from one war was not learned and was repeated,’ he told Empire. 

‘It’s also the end of empire: we enter the Second World War and by the end of it, there is no empire, really. But I… have revised the scope of what it is.

The show will debut in Birmingham before a performance in London and going on tour in 2023  

All the beloved characters from the show will take part in the stage production, which will retell the love story between Shelby and Grace Burgress

The show will start in September, after the sixth and final series of Peaky Blinders will have aired on BBC One in February 

‘It will now go into and beyond the Second World War. Because I just think the energy that is out there in the world for this, I want to keep it going, and I want to see how this can progress beyond that..

‘I think of this sixth series as the end of the beginning.’

It comes as the final season of Peaky Blinders will likely premiere in February, with show star Cillian Murphy promising a ‘gothic’ tone. 

New cast member Conrad Khan told Radio Times he was told the new season will come to screens in February.

He said the show ‘comes out, from what I last heard – I mean, these things change so quickly – I think that will come out next February’.

The actor, who will play a new character in the show, added: ‘There was so much footage, so many episodes, that it does take a while to edit – six months or something.’ 

Meanwhile, Cillian, who plays Tommy Shelby, has teased a dark tone for the final season, telling Rolling Stone: ‘I think it’s going to be very intense. 

‘The word we keep using is “gothic”. Yeah, it’s going to be heavy!”  

Peaky Blinders much-anticipated trailer for its final season left fans on the edge of their seats as Tommy Shelby opened fire in intense scenes. 

Fans of the series will get to purchase ickets for the dance production, pictured, from today, from £22.50

The trailer was jam-packed with nail-biting stand-offs, intense fight scenes and a devastating fire, leaving fans wondering what plot twists the final series would bring. 

The fifth season ended on a cliffhanger, with Tommy seeing visions of his late wife Grace (Annabelle Wallis) and turning a gun on himself following his botched assassination attempt of the British Union of Fascists leader.

The sixth season of Peaky Blinders resumed filming in January after the show was forced to shut down set last March due to the coronavirus crisis. 

The BBC show has been running for eight years and has enjoyed huge popularity but the sixth season has been confirmed as the final one, with creator Steven Knight confirming the story will return ‘in another form’.

Creator Steven Knight recently hinted Peaky Blinders could continue without Cillian’s pivotal character, telling Birmingham Live: ‘There may be worlds that are part of the Peaky world that are about someone else.’