The cast and creators of The Play What I Wrote, easily one of the hottest West End tickets during its two stints at the Wyndham's Theatre in 2001/2, are to reunite for Ducktastic!, a parody of the Vegas illusionists Siegfried and Roy. Produced again by David Pugh, directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Sean Foley and Hamish McColl, it opens at the Albery Theatre on October 17th after a short out-of-town tryout in Newcastle. It depicts a famous illusionist sacked from his Vegas show after an accident with an emu (in real life Roy Horn was badly injured by a tiger) who then joins forces with a pet-shop owner from Portsmouth to put on a West End show. The title of the show reflects that instead of tigers, the show will use.. ducks. The Play What I Wrote won the Olivier Award for Best Entertainment, but did not fare so well on Broadway, where it played houses of roughly 60% capacity and lost out on the Special Theatrical Event Tony. It's safe to say that its humour is distinctively British.
The first play by a British-born black writer – Elmina's Kitchen by Kwame Kwei-Armah – will close a month early this weekend, cutting short its limited four month run. Originally seen at The National Theatre as part of Nicholas Hytner's exciting inaugural season, Elmina's Kitchen tells a very real story of the problems with black men falling into crime in Hackney. When the production came to the West End Kwei-Armah, himself a successful television actor, decided to take the lead role of Deli in order to attract a wider audience to the play, but even with 50 £10 seats at each performance it failed to find its audience. It was bad news all round for the black theatre community last week though as plans for the first theatre dedicated to finding new black British talent was pulled. Replacing Elmina's Kitchen at the Garrick Theatre will be the Birmingham Rep transfer of On the Ceiling with Ralf Little and Ron Cook.
Another play, The Shaughraun, has also posted early closing notices and The Countess, an English staging of the off-Broadway production closed earlier this month following poor sales. Described as a 'comic melodrama', The Shaughraun, directed by Riverdance director John McColgan, transferred from Dublin following two successful sell-out seasons there and likewise The Countess was a hit in New York before opening in June. Last summer a succession of plays closed one after the other, and at this rate it seems like history could repeat itself. Val Kilmer's debut in The Postman Always Rings Twice, David Schwimmer in Some Girl(s) and Nick Moran's play Telstar are all said to be suffering from low-capacities, with matinees for both Some Girl(s) and Postman being dropped (supposedly due to Schwimmer's hayfever and the content of Postman being too risqué). High ticket prices for plays in the West End – £40 ($69) – are seen as poor value when subsidised theatres like the National and Royal Court offer them at a much lower rate.
This summer's production of Tick.. Tick.. BOOM! at the Menier Chocolate Factory will be followed by Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George. Produced by David Babani and Danielle Tarento, Sondheim's musical - about the French painter Georges Seurat, and later his great-grandson George – was last seen in a major production at The National Theatre in 1990, when the lead roles were taken by Maria Freidman and Phillip Quast. Daniel Evans, an Olivier winner in 2000 for his role in Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along, will take the male lead, but names for the female lead are yet to surface. It is scheduled to run from November 14th 2005 – February 18th 2006. Tick.. Tick.. BOOM! continues its limited season until September 3rd. Recently Christian Campbell replaced Neil Patrick Harris in the lead role of Jonathan so Harris could pursue filming commitments in the States.
And finally, Matthew Kelly, winner of the 2004 Best Actor Olivier Award, is to tour the regions as Malvolio in a two-month run of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. He won the award for his role as Lennie in the West End transfer Of Mice and Men at the end of a year which saw him accused of child sex abuse in the 1970s. Charges were later dropped.
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