Novello News

On Saturday 6 April, MAMMA MIA! celebrated its 14th birthday in London and now enters its 15th year. The show has also extended its booking period to 5 April 2014.

Tickets go on sale today for the world premiere of new stage musical From Here to Eternity. The show will preview at the Shaftesbury Theatre from 30th September with Press Night on 23rd October 2013. Tickets can be bought from FromHereToEternityTheMusical.com or by calling box office on 020 7379 5399.

On the day that rehearsals commence for its forthcoming production of Travels with My Aunt, the Menier Chocolate Factory is delighted to announce that Iain Mitchell and Gregory Gudgeon will be joining the previously confirmed cast members, David Bamber and Jonathan Hyde. Adapted for the stage by Giles Havergal and directed by Christopher Luscombe, the production has a strictly limited 8 week season, 2nd May to 29th June.

This week's two-part poll asked which Sondheim and Lloyd Webber shows are your favorites, and you can check out your response below!

Opening the festival is Monkey: Journey to the West, an extraordinary music theater collaboration based on the classic Chinese folktale 'Journey to the West' which dates to 1592.

Chris Larkin joins David Bark-Jones, Maureen Beattie, Simon Bubb, Danielle Flett, Geoffrey Freshwater, Neil Pearson, Thomasin Rand and Sasha Waddell in the UK tour of Michael Frayn's multi- award-winning backstage comedy Noises Off, directed by Lindsay Posner. Following its acclaimed run at The Old Vic and then at the Novello Theatre in the West End, Noises Off will tour theatres across the UK and Ireland from tonight, 27 March 2013. New dates have also been confirmed, which include Birmingham New Alexandra Theatre, Cardiff's Wales Millennium Centre, Glasgow King's Theatre and the Wycombe Swan.

New BroadwayWorld.com Poll - What is your favorite Andrew Lloyd Webber show?

Quasimodo, the last great unproduced musical by Oliver! composer Lionel Bart, is getting its World Premiere, 50 years after it was written. In a major coup for the King's Head Theatre in London, Quasimodo will play for a 4-week season from last night, 20 March through 13 April 2013. Scroll below for a first look at the show's stars Steven Webb and Zoe George!

Sondheim is the winner of an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards, including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award. Described by Frank Rich of the New York Times as 'the greatest, and perhaps best-known artist working in musical theatre', his most famous scores include (as composer/lyricist) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and Assassins. He also wrote the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy. Lloyd Webber has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. He has also gained a number of honours, including a knighthood in 1992, followed by a peerage from the British Government for services to Music, seven Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, fourteen Ivor Novello Awards, seven Olivier Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006. Several of his songs, notably 'The Music of the Night', 'I Don't Know How to Love Him', 'Don't Cry for Me, Argentina' and 'You Must Love Me', 'Any Dream Will Do' and 'Memory' have been widely recorded and were hits outside of their parent musicals.

Ahead of the first public preview tonight, producers have released rehearsal footage and creative interviews for Quasimodo, the last great unproduced musical by Oliver! composer Lionel Bart, which is getting its World Premiere, 50 years after it was written. In a major coup for the King's Head Theatre in London, Quasimodo will play for a 4-week season from Wednesday 20 March - Saturday 13 April. Click below to watch the behind-the-scenes video!

Tickets will be on sale from 9am on Wednesday 20th March for the Menier Chocolate Factory's forthcoming production of Travels with My Aunt from 2nd May to 29th June, for a strictly limited 8 week season. Adapted for the stage by Giles Havergal and directed by Christopher Luscombe the cast features Jonathan Hyde and David Bamber.

Fifty years after he started writing it, Quasimodo, a major musical by Oliver! composer Lionel Bart, will finally get its World Premiere at the King's Head Theatre in London this month, March 2013.

According to the Sun, during filming for an ITV special to honor Andrew Lloyd Webber's 40 years in show business, he revealed Scarlett Johansson was his first choice for the role of 'Maria' in The Sound of Music during his 2006 'How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?' talent search for BBC1. The show ended up casting Connie Fisher in the role.

Henry Goodman plys the role of Arthur Winslow in Terence Rattigan's The Winslow Boy, which will open at The Old Vic tonight, 19 March 2013. Directed by Lindsay Posner, Rattigan's compelling play is based on the true story of a father's fight to clear his son's name when he is expelled from Naval College after being convicted of theft.

As BroadwayWorld previously reported, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber is nearly finished with his work on a musical based on the events surrounding the 1963 Profumo Affair, and we revealed back in December that the project will reunite him with lyricist Don Black and playwright Christopher Hampton - the team behind SUNSET BOULEVARD, which debuted in the West End in 1993 and later won seven 1995 Tony Awards including Best Musical.

Now according to the Evening Standard, John Profumo will only be a small part of the new musical. In fact, the relationship between showgirl Christine Keeler and Profumo will make up only 'about seven minutes of the narrative.' Additionally, Lloyd Webber revealed thet the show's working title is 'Stephen Ward,' who was the pimp that brought the two together.

Out today, Tuesday, March 12 via Ultra Music, deadmau5 & Imogen Heap's single “Telemiscommunications” is a delicate melancholic song that is a very different direction for the mau5 which sees him drop the tempo dramatically.

Tom Gold Dance will present two evenings of dance with a program that will feature the World Premiere of La Plage with music by John Zorn, also included on the program will be Faure Fantasy with music by Gabrielle Faure; Gershwin Preludes, music by George Gershwin; and Mad about the Boy with music by Ivor Novello and Noel Coward, all with choreography by Tom Gold.

Owen Teale, Samantha Bond, Oliver Cotton, Sian Thomas and Annabel Scholey have joined previously announced star Zoe Wanamaker in a new production of Peter Nichols' Passion Play, Peter Nichols' celebrated black comedy about love and infidelity, according to the Daily Mail.

Lakeshore Records will release the EMPEROR – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally today, March 5, 2013. Alex Heffes (The Last King of Scotland, State of Play) composed the original score.