The Regent's Park Open Air Theatre smash hit Gershwin musical CRAZY FOR YOU will transfer to London's West End, opening at the Novello Theatre on Saturday 8 October. Cameron Mackintosh, who was full of praise when he saw the show in Regent's Park, is thrilled to be able to play host to the production in one of his theatres. CRAZY FOR YOU reunites director Timothy Sheader and choreographer Stephen Mear, who were responsible for the multi-award winning production of Hello, Dolly!.
The Regent's Park Open Air Theatre Gershwin musical CRAZY FOR YOU will transfer to London's West End, opening at the Novello Theatre on Friday 7 October.
This season's productions demonstrate the three strands of Finborough's artistic policy with an eclectic mix of new writing, genuine rediscoveries and music theatre. They are set to welcome Olivier Award winning actress Celia Imrie to the Finborough Theatre who will star in Drama at Inish.
Cameron Mackintosh's musical comedy BETTY BLUE EYES, based on the Alan Bennett and Malcolm Mowbray film ‘A Private Function', will close at the Novello Theatre on Saturday 24 September 2011 after a run of six months. First Night Records will release the original cast album for the show. The release date has not yet been announced.
According to the Daily Mail, the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre production of Crazy For You, starring Clare Foster and Sean Palmer, will transfer to the West End's Novello Theatre- taking the place of Betty Blue Eyes.
Cameron Mackintosh's musical comedy BETTY BLUE EYES, based on the Alan Bennett and Malcolm Mowbray film ‘A Private Function', will close at the Novello Theatre on Saturday 24 September 2011 after a run of six months.
Musical comedy BETTY BLUE EYES, by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe and based on the Alan Bennett and Malcolm Mowbray film 'A Private Function', will close at the Novello Theatre on Saturday 24 September 2011 after a run of six months.
Seventy six years after its movie release, Top Hat will receive its world stage premiere at the Milton Keynes Theatre on 16 August 2011 where it opens for the start of an initial 17 UK week tour prior to an anticipated West End transfer in spring 2012.
Andrew Lloyd-Webber has confirmed he is looking for a buyer or partner to take possession of the Palace Theatre, the first theatre he bought outright in 1983 for £1.3million, according to the UK's Daily Express.
Part of the Finborough Theatre's
Celebrating British Music Theatre
series
Blue Shale Theatre in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre
by arrangement with Samuel French Limited presents
PERCHANCE TO DREAM
'A Musical Romance'
Devised, Written and Composed by Ivor Novello.
Directed by Max Pappenheim. Musical Direction by Ross Leadbeater.
Designed by Gregor Donnelly. Sound by Edward Lewis.
Cast: Taube Brahms. Michael Burgen. Clare Louise Connolly. Laura Hanna. Amanda Hootman. Annabel Leventon. James Marchant. Rachael McCormick. Martin Milnes. Kelly Price. Claire Redcliffe. Robert Rees. James Russell. Gemma Sandzer. Katy Treharne.
Details of the cast for PERCHANCE TO DREAM are below.
Please also note the correct date for the press night of LULLABIES OF BROADMOOR which also plays during September. The press night is
Venus At Broadmoor and The Demon Box - FRIDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER 2011 AT 3.00PM
The Murder Club and Wilderness - FRIDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER 2011 AT 7.30PM
and not Friday 1st September as previously stated.
The Finborough Theatre's acclaimed 'Celebrating British Music Theatre' series continues with Ivor Novello's most romantic musical, Perchance to Dream, opening at the Finborough Theatre for a limited run of eight Sunday and Monday performances on Sunday, 4 September 2011 (Press Night: Monday, 5 September 2011 at 7.30pm). This rediscovery is the first professional London production in more than 25 years, and also commemorates the 60th anniversary of the death of composer Ivor Novello.
Spanning the Regency, Victorian and post-war eras, and featuring a score filled with some of Novello's most ravishing songs including Love is My Reason, When I Curtsied to the King, A Woman's Heart and the classic We'll Gather Lilacs, Perchance to Dream is a classic Novello musical - an escapist 'musical romance' whose original 1945 run in the West End played for 1,022 performances.
In 1818, Sir Graham Rodney, an impoverished womaniser, is the owner of Huntersmoon, a magnificent old country house, but seeks relief from his life of leisure by masquerading as the dread highwayman "Frenchy". Just at the moment when he finally finds love, the law runs him to ground with tragic results. A generation later, his estate has passed to the wrong side of the family and tragedy strikes a second time. More than a century must go by before the ghosts of Huntersmoon can finally be laid to rest...
Welsh-born composer, author and actor Ivor Novello (1893-1951) was one of the most eminent British entertainers of the 20th century. As a composer, he trained in Cardiff, Gloucester (alongside eminent British composers - Ivor Gurney and Herbert Howells) and at Magdalen College School, Oxford. His musicals include Glamorous Night, Careless Rapture, Crest of the Wave, The Dancing Years, Gay's the Word and King's Rhapsody; his more than 250 songs include Keep the Home Fires Burning, I Can Give You the Starlight, Waltz of My Heart, And Her Mother Came Too, The Land of Might-Have-Been, Why Isn't It You and Primrose. His plays include Symphony in Two Flats, I Lived With You and The Truth Game. As an actor, he was one of Britain's first major film stars, appearing in over twenty films including The Call of the Blood and playing the title role in the original silent version of Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger; while his long stage career included many of his own plays and musicals. Novello's musical legacy is commemorated in the Ivor Novello Awards, established in 1955 to honour excellence in British music writing. This production commemorates the 60th anniversary of his death.
Director Max Pappenheim recently assisted on Beating Heart Cadaver and The Goodnight Bird at the Finborough Theatre. Directing includes The Charmed Life (King's Head Theatre), An Evening With Opera (Southwark Cathedral), Arcadia and Sweeney Todd (Rugby School), and, as Musical Director for Open Door Opera, The Enchanted Child (Edinburgh Festival and St John's, Smith Square).
The cast includes Taube Brahms Kindertransport, The Way Of The World, Redemption Over Hammersmith Broadway, A Woman Of No Importance (LAMDA); Michael Burgen All Male Iolanthe (Union Theatre and Wilton's Music Hall), Alice in Wonderland (Erasmus International Theatre), Zaide (Sadler's Wells), The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (New Vic Theatre), Sweeney Todd (Union Theatre); Clare Louise Connolly Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (Theatre Royal Haymarket), Next Door's Baby (Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond), Six Characters In Search Of An Author (Headlong), The Crimson Petal And The White; Laura Hanna A Short History of the Royal Court (Royal Court Theatre), Into the Woods, Hedda Gabler, Romeo and Juliet (LAMDA); Amanda Hootman Epsom Downs, Her Naked Skin (Guildford School of Acting); Annabel Leventon The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night (Royal Shakespeare Company), Pillars Of The Community (National Theatre), Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell (Old Vic and Apollo Theatre), New Tricks; James Marchant The Same...But Different (Pleasance Islington), The Straits (Paines Plough), Waking The Dead (BBC); Rachael McCormick Oliver! (Theatre Royal, Drury Lane); Martin Milnes Utopia Limited (Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Festival, Buxton), The Yeoman Of The Guard (Tower of London), Promises And Lies (Birmingham Rep), The Andrew Marr Show (BBC); Kelly Price Zack (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester), The Misanthrope (Ambassadors Theatre), A Little Night Music (Menier Chocolate Factory and Garrick Theatre), Chicago (Cambridge Theatre), Guys and Dolls (Donmar Warehouse and Piccadilly Theatre), Desperately Seeking Susan (Novello Theatre), Waterloo Road, Doctors; Claire Redcliffe When We Are Married (Garrick Theatre), Great Expectations, Tom's Midnight Garden (Library Theatre, Manchester), Question Time (Arcola Theatre), EastEnders (BBC); Robert Rees Peter Pan (New Wimbledon Theatre), All the Fun of the Fair (Garrick Theatre), State Fair (Finborough Theatre and Trafalgar Studios), Shakespeare Sonnet Walk (Shakespeare's Globe); James Russell Namaskar, Quality Street, Miss Lily Gets Boned (Finborough Theatre), Lewis (ITV); Gemma Sandzer Les Miserables (Palace Theatre), HMS Pinafore (King's Head Theatre), Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone; Katy Treharne The Phantom Of The Opera (Her Majesty's Theatre).
The Celebrating British Music Theatre series at the Finborough Theatre
In 2006, the Finborough Theatre began the Celebrating British Music Theatre series with a sell-out production of Leslie Stuart's Florodora. Productions since then have included sell-our rediscoveries of Lionel Monckton's Our Miss Gibbs, Harold Fraser-Simson's operetta The Maid of the Mountains, A 'Gilbert and Sullivan' Double Bill featuring Gilbert's play Sweethearts and Sullivan's opera The Zoo, Dame Ethel Smyth's opera The Boatswain's Mate, Sandy Wilson's The Buccaneer, Oscar Asche's Chu Chin Chow, and Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley's The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd.
According to Black Star News, Nicole Ari Parker will star opposite Blair Underwood in the upcoming Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Emily Mann. Parker will play Blanche Du Bois in the production, which is set to open in the spring of 2012.
This season's productions demonstrate the three strands of Finborough's artistic policy with an eclectic mix of new writing, genuine rediscoveries and music theatre. They are set to welcome Olivier Award winning actress Celia Imrie to the Finborough Theatre who will star in Drama at Inish.
The Olivier Award-nominated The Rat Pack Live from Las Vegas is coming back to the West End for a strictly limited five-week Christmas season, at the Wyndham's Theatre from December 20 - January 21.
On Sunday 9 October 2011, for one night only, there will be a special one-off concert performance of Stiles and Drewe's new musical SOHO CINDERS at the Novello Theatre, in aid of Teenage Cancer Trust. The concert will feature an all-star cast, including Kerry Ellis, Hannah Waddingham, Beverly Rudd, David Bedella, and Sandi Toksvig
According to the Evening Standard, theatre legend Andrew Lloyd Webber will award 10 scholarships for performers going to college for music and drama. The Weekend Arts College, which just lost its Arts Council grant will also receive funding from Lloyd Webber to go towards employing arts tutors.
Robert Lindsay and Joanna Lumley will lead the cast in Trevor Nunn's production of James Goldman's The Lion in Winter. The Lion in Winter will run from 4 November - 28 January, with press night on 15 November 2011. The Lion in Winter is produced by the Theatre Royal Haymarket Company. Further casting will be announced shortly.
