Menier Chocolate Factory News

The critically acclaimed and Best New Musical of 2014, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, is proud to announce that West End musical theatre legends Bonnie Langford (Spamalot, Chicago, Cats, Dr Who, Just William, Bugsy Malone) and Gary Wilmot (The Pajama Game, Chicago, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Me and My Girl) will be waltzing their way into the show at The Savoy Theatre from 16 September 2014.

Olivier Award winner David Bedella will play razor-wielding madman Sweeney Todd and Sarah Ingram his pie-making partner in crime, Mrs Lovett, in an intimate new production of the Tony Award and Olivier Award-winning musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by Hugh Wheeler, will kick-off the autumn season at Twickenham Theatre in West London. It will start previews on Wednesday 10 September and runs to Saturday 4 October. Press night is Tuesday 16 September at 7.45pm.

New York's runaway hit comedy Buyer & Cellar, about a (fictional) Los Angeles actor who takes a job working in the (very real) basement shopping arcade of Barbra Streisand's Malibu estate, begins performances in Dallas at the Dallas City Performance Hall on Wednesday, September 3, 2014 for a strictly limited engagement through Saturday, September 6, 2014. Buyer & Cellar is written by Jonathan Tolins, directed by Stephen Brackett, and produced in Dallas by Darren Bagert, Dan Shaheen and Ted Snowdon.

Opera Australia Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini AM and leading Australian theatre producer John Frost AM today announced the principal cast for their new production of Cole Porter's smash-hit musical comedy Anything Goes, which will tour Australia in 2015.

Gary Naylor previews an exciting selection of September's new openings as London gears up for what should be its most successful Autumn since the credit crunch claimed its first victims seven years ago this month.

Broadway casting directors Duncan Stewart and Benton Whitley will take center stage on the next new episode of ABC's award-winning reality television series 'Extreme Weight Loss,' airing Tuesday, September 2 at 8pm ET (7pm CT).

Kitchen Theatre Company begins its 24th Season on September 10, 2014 with the world premiere of an outrageous new comedy, The House by Brian Parks. Downsizing couple, Martyn and Shanny, have struck a For Sale By Owner deal with upsizing couple, Lindsay and Fischer. The empty nesters are set to move to a condo, and the young couple is ready to move in and start a family. But a house full of everything a family accumulates is a lot to pack, so the new owners have given the sellers a few weeks to finish the job.

Today was the media launch for Forbidden Broadway! The Menier Chocolate Factory production has two reasons to celebrate - first, it's moving into the West End, leaping across town to the Vaudeville Theatre; and second, it has a new cast member, Christina Bianco.

Good morning, BroadwayWorld! Because we know all our readers eat, sleep and breathe Broadway, what could be better than waking up to it? Today's big news: RED EYE OF LOVE begins off-Broadway, Patrick Page can't stop being bad at 54 Below, Michael Cerveris goes to NOLA and more!

The Park Theatre has announced the casting of Matthew Kelly and Simon Greenall in Snapdragon Productions' forthcoming production of Toast by Richard Bean. Snapdragon previously produced the successful Thark with Clive Francis and The Dead Wait.

The Menier Chocolate Factory has announced that its upcoming season will include productions of ASSASSINS by Stephen Sondheim & John Weidman, BUYER AND CELLAR by Jonathan Tolins & starring Michael Urie, plus AN EVENING WITH JOAN PLOWRIGHT.

Here's the first picture of Olivier Award winner David Bedella as razor-wielding madman Sweeney Todd and Sarah Ingram his pie-making partner in crime, Mrs Lovett, in an intimate new production of the Tony Award and Olivier Award-winning musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) has announced fall programming at OBERON, featuring limited engagements of exciting work by groundbreaking artists. The lineup for October and November includes POOL (NO WATER) by Mark Ravenhill, created by One Year Lease Theater Company and directed by Ianthe Demos; SHIDA, a new musical in development, written and performed by Broadway powerhouse Jeannette Bayardelle and directed by Andy Sandberg; and RUBY WAX: SANE NEW WORLD, written and performed by the incomparable comedienne and actor Ruby Wax.

Guys and Dolls - a joyous and vibrant celebration of Prohibition-era New York - marks a series of firsts when it bursts onto the Festival Theatre stage at Chichester this summer, running now through 21 September 2014. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the production below!

The full-fledged, full-scale stage musical adaptation of Barry Manilow's classic COPACABANA is set for a new UK tour kicking off later this Fall according to a new announcement.

In 2012, Phyllida Lloyd's all-female production of Julius Caesar at the Donmar Warehouse placed the play in a women's prison. It stunned audiences on both sides of the Atlantic and challenged the idea of 'who owns Shakespeare?' In one of the schools workshops around the production, teachers heard one of their students, a girl, speak in public for the first time. It couldn't end there.

The Old Globe today announced the full cast and creative team for the World Premiere of Bright Star, a new American musical featuring music by Edie Brickell and Steve Martin, lyrics by Brickell, and book by Martin, based on an original story by Martin and Brickell. Directed by Walter Bobbie, Bright Star will run September 13 - November 2, 2014 on the Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage in the Old Globe Theatre, part of the Globe's Conrad Prebys Theatre Center. Preview performances run September 13 - September 27. Opening night is Sunday, September 28 at 7:00 p.m. Single tickets go on sale on Friday, August 8 at noon.

Cynthia Erivo (I Can't Sing!, The Color Purple) returns to the West End alongside Cassidy Janson (Avenue Q, Wicked, Candide) in the European premiere of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's Dessa Rose, running at Trafalgar Studios (Studio 2), today 29th July - Saturday 30th August 2014. Press night is Thursday, 31st July, 7pm.