First Look: Helen Mirren in The Audience

Helen Mirren as Her Majesty The Queen in Peter Morgan’s new play The Audience at the Gielgud Theatre in London.

The first photo has been released of Dame Helen Mirren as The Queen in new play The Audience at the Gielgud Theatre in London.

Written by “The Queen” screenwriter Peter Morgan, the play is set during the Queen’s weekly audience with her Prime Ministers and spans The Queen’s entire 60 year reign.

Stephen Daldry directs Mirren and an all star cast of British Prime Ministers through the ages including Michael Elwyn as Anthony Eden, Haydn Gwynne as Margaret Thatcher, Robert Hardy as Winston Churchill, Richard McCabe as Harold Wilson, Nathaniel Parker as Gordon Brown, Paul Ritter as John Major and Rufus Wright as David Cameron. The Equerry is Geoffrey Beevers and the role of Young Elizabeth will be played by Bebe Cave, Maya Gerber and Nell Williams.

The Audience is now playing at the Gielgud Theatre in London until 15 June 2013.

Photo by Johan Persson.

Book tickets to see Helen Mirren in The Audience at the Gielgud Theatre in London

Strallen Watch: Keeping track of Scarlett, Summer, Zizi, Sasi…

On top of everything else at the Westendtheatre.com bunker, we have to try and keep track of those flighty (but über talented) Strallen girls!

A theatrical dynasty in the making (note: all forthcoming children of the Strallen’s MUST be made to keep their mother’s maiden names in case they show any theatrical leanings), Scarlett is busy changing roles this month, whilst Summer, Zizi and Sasi are in varying states of performance .

Scarlett Strallen has just completed a nice run in Singin’ in the Rain in Chichester and at the Palace Theatre in London. It’s been a busy few months for Scarlett as she has been getting wet 8 shows a week and at the same time rehearsing to star as Cassie in Bob Avian’s production of a A Chorus Line at the Palladium theatre (previews start tomorrow, Tuesday 5 February 2013).

Summer Strallen left the cast of Top Hat in November after wowing audiences alongside Tom Chambers at the Aldwych Theatre in the Ginger Rogers role. We await her next move with some anticipation.

Whilst over at the Menier Chocolate Factory, Zizi Strallen is currently appearing in Maria Friedman’s smash-hit Sondheim revival Merrily We Roll Along (transfer news anyone?).

Plus their dear aunt Bonita Melody Lysette Langford (Bonnie Langford to you lot), is still giving some seriously stern secretary slash sex siren as Roz in the glorious UK tour of Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 (ATG, what’s going on loves, you surely own enough West End theatres to find a little London home for it?)

And wait for it, there’s more! Joining auntie Bonnie in 9 to 5 is youngest sister Sasi Strallen, putting in her hours slogging it out in the ensemble fresh out of ArtsEd. We expect great things to come.

LINKS

Book tickets to A Chorus Line at the London Palladium
Book tickets to Singin’ in the Rain at the Palace Theatre in London
Book tickets to Top Hat at the Aldwych Theatre in London
Book tickets to Merrily We Roll Along at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London
9 to 5 The Musical – UK tour website

Jennifer Ellison’s Hollywood glamour in Singin’ in the Rain photoshoot

TV and stage star Jennifer Ellison is joining Adam Cooper in Singin’ in the Rain at the Palace Theatre from 18 February 2013.

And she looks every bit the movie star in these hot new pictures taken for the show.

Jennifer will join the cast to play silent movie siren Lina Lamont, with Adam Cooper as dashing Don Lockwood. Other new cast members include Louise Bowden, replacing Scarlett Strallen as Kathy Selden, and Stephane Annelli replacing  Daniel Crossley in the role of Cosmo Brown

Jennifer Ellison has forged a strong stage career, recently starring as Paulette in Legally Blonde on tour, and featuring in Boeing Boeing at the Comedy Theatre, Chicago at the Adelphi Theatre and Calendar Girls on UK tour. She is most famous for playing Emily Shadwick in Brookside and appearing in Hell’s Kitchen and Dancing On Ice. Other TV credits including Lynda La Plante’s The Commander: Abduction, Hotel Babylon and The Verdict.

Book tickets to Singin’ in the Rain at the Palace Theatre in London

 

Theatre stakes are high in Audience Awards

It’s all getting very competitive.

Recent years have seen an increase in the number of theatre awards that include categories voted for by the theatregoing public, which means the opportunity for producers to lobby their fans hard.

It’s not quite as intense as the multi-million dollar campaigns run by Hollywood movie studios lobbying Academy members during an Oscars campaign, but in West End terms the prize is just as high.

An audience award win is not just good for straplines on posters and, hopefully, ticket sales, but also a great way to rally a show’s fan base and build up important audience support and a sense of community around the production. Wicked is a show that has achieved this like no other, masterminded by its producer – and former theatre marketing agency head – Michael McCabe, and has been justly rewarded with both Olivier and Evening Standard audience award wins. Wicked has also capitalised on the recent growth in social media, something that also underpins much of the success and increasing importance of Audience Award categories.

The Olivier Awards started their Audience Award in 2002 (although it then disappeared until 2010), and the Evening Standard kicked off their Best Night Out audience award last year. The Whatsonstage Awards has been audience-voted from the start of its life in 2001 – and nominations for the 2013 awards are currently underway.

Of course, producers have lobbied Theatreland judging panels for many years, but it has largely been kept behind-the-scenes and targeted at the small number of people who ultimately get to choose how most of the theatre awards are divided up.

The latest show to be lobbying hard for the Evening Standard Best Night Out audience award prize is Top Hat, the movie-to-stage show currently playing at the Aldwych Theatre in London. Part of the campaign is a specially shot video featuring the cast (see below). Expect much more of this as the influence of Audience awards, and the fans that vote for them, continues to grow.

VIDEO

Top Hat’ for the Evening Standard “Best Night Out” Award

VOTE

Vote for the Evening Standard Theatre Awards – Best Night Out award 2012. Shows up for nomination are Cabaret, Chariots of Fire, A Chorus of Disapproval, Let It Be, Loserville, Matilda The Musical, Our Boys, Singin’ in the Rain and Top Hat (voting closes Midnight on Wednesday 221 November)

 

LINKS

Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2012 – Nominations list

 

Julie Walters, Miranda Hart to star in Mousetrap fundraiser

60 years is a long time to be doing anything, including reigning a commonwealth, so it’s hats off to The Mousetrap for keeping those murders coming night after night since it opened at the New Ambassadors Theatre in London on 25 November 1952.

As a fabulous way of garnering some interest in the show, a special one-off gala performance of the murder mystery will be played at the show’s current home, the St Martin’s Theatre, this Sunday 18 November 2012.

Directed by Phyllida Lloyd, the staged reading (i.e. they haven’t learnt the lines!) will include a who’s who of British talent including Julie Walters as Mrs Boyle, Miranda Hart as Miss Casewell, Downton’s Hugh Bonneville as Giles Ralston, Tamsin Greig as Mollie Ralston, Iain Glen as Sgt Trotter, Patrick Stewart as Mr Paravicini, Nicholas Farrell as Major Metcalf and Harry Lloyd as Christopher Wren.

This will also mark the 25,000th performance of The Mousetrap and all proceeds from the night will go to theatre-education charity Mousetrap Theatre Projects, run by the lovely Susan Whiddington.

A camper night we cannot imagine. Rather irritatingly it is already SOLD OUT – please God can someone record it for radio so we the masses can share the joy!

MEMORIAL TO AGATHA

Also this Sunday, a permanent Memorial to Dame Agatha Christie, writer of The Mousetrap, will be unveiled at St Martin’s Cross – close to the theatre on St Martin’s Lane, by the Lord Mayor of Westminster, Christie’s grandson Mathew Prichard and producer of the show Stephen Waley-Cohen.

BOOK

Book tickets to The Mousetrap at the St Martin’s Theatre in London

Dress Circle: Calling all theatre owners

It’s sad news that theatrical institution Dress Circle is set to close this month, on 15 August 2012, after 33 years in business.

The Covent Garden store has long been a meeting place for lovers of musicals and has provided a nice sense of community within the West End for theatregoers and performers alike.

But the reality is that it has also struggled to keep up against the internet onslaught, with ever more songs being downloaded, bought on Amazon and streamed for free on services such as Spotify.

The showbiz signings and theatre outings were clever ways to deliver something that the web can’t – real-life experiences – but they haven’t converted into cold, hard cash.

The theatre community has tried to help, although the benefit concert held a few months ago does not seem to have delivered much in the way of funds.

If the theatre community really wanted to help then it is theatre owners that probably hold the key. Whilst it is inevitable that Dress Circle now needs to exist online in the shape of its website, www.dresscircle.co.uk, some kind of physical presence would also make sense – for Dress Circle and the whole theatre industry.

The one thing the West End theatre industry does have in abundance is real-estate, in the shape of 50-odd West End theatres in central London.

Like Dress Circle, theatres are retailers of merchandise as much as hosts of theatrical experiences, and a store that pulls together merchandise from across all of London’s theatres into one place seems like a no-brainer.

It’s hard to believe there isn’t room somewhere (The Palace?) for a physical focal point for Dress Circle’s real-world events and a shop-window for its activities – and the merchandising activities of the whole theatre industry.

 

Plug in the Lead charity concert to celebrate rock in the West End

West End performer Alexis Gerred is organising a charity concert at Leicester Square Theatre this June.

In association with Paulden Hall Productions, Plug in the Lead on Sunday 17 June will be a celebration of Rock music performed by some of the West End’s leading performers. All profits from the event will go to St. Christopher’s Hospice.

Paul Gambacinni will host the evening with headline performers including veteran singer Tony Christie, who recently starred in Dreamboats & Petticoats alongside Alexis Gerred, and Lucie Jones (Les Miserables), Lauren Samuels (We Will Rock You), Jimmy Johnston (The Phantom of the Opera), Lorna Want (Footloose), Liam Doyle (Mamma Mia!), Steph Feron (Over The Rainbow finalist), AJ Dean  (Dreamboats & Petticoats), Bradley Clarkson (Grease) and Daniella Bowen (Scrooge).

The talented cast will sing some of the world’s biggest Rock songs by artists such as Queen, Rod Stewart, Journey, The Kinks and of course Tony Christie.

Visit the Plug in the Lead website for details.

LINKS

Plug in the Lead website
Leicester Square Theatre

Andrew Lloyd Webber to find new Superstar

SOCIAL MEDIA ROUND-UP

Andrew Lloyd Webber has defected from the BBC to ITV for his next TV talent search, this time casting a Jesus and Judas for his new, arena production of Jesus Christ Superstar.

[If you are reading this on a mobile device, visit this story here: 

Andrew Lloyd Webber has defected from the BBC to ITV for his next TV talent search, this time casting a Jesus and Judas for his new, arena production of Jesus Christ Superstar.

 

 

Jesus Christ Superstar TV talent show

It’s no secret that Andrew Lloyd Webber was pretty excited about the new production of Jesus Christ Superstar mounted by the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada last year. The show then transferred to the La Jolla Playhouse in California and is now slated for Broadway, opening at the Neil Simon Theatre on 22 March starring Paul Nolan as Jesus and Josh Young as Judas.

But the Great Lord has other plans for the show.

Rumours of a London revival of this Des McAuff production have been circulating for a while, but The Sun has now broken the story that Lloyd Webber is defecting from the BBC to ITV to run another TV talent search, this time to find a Jesus and Judas for his new London production of Superstar.

Lloyd Webber’s TV talent searches have all been for the Beeb, most recently Over The Rainbow which resulted in Danielle Hope being cast in his multi-million pound production of The Wizard of Oz, still playing at the London Palladium.

But ITV is keen to poach Lloyd Webber for its own channel. ITV ran Grease talent search Grease Is The Word in 2007 to cast Danny in Sandy in David Ian’s Grease revival but it was a ratings flop. ITV’s head of programmes Peter Fincham is believed to consider a Lloyd Webber-fronted show would fare much better.

Rumours are also circulating that a UK tour of Lloyd Webb’er s1984 musical Starlight Express, which kicks off at the New Wimbledon Theatre on 10 May 2012 produced by Bill Kenwright, may also come into town at some point.

In other ALW news, excitement is mounting on Broadway for the Michael Grandage helmed production of Evita at the Marquis Theatre starring Ricky Martin and Elena Roger, which starts previews on 12 March 2012.

LINKS

Book tickets to Jesus Christ Superstar at the Neil Simon Theatre in New York
Book tickets to EVITA at the Marquis Theatre in New York
Book tickets to The Wizard of Oz at the London Palladium in London

Hal Prince happy with new Phantom touring show?

We would love to know how Hal Prince feels about Cameron Mackintosh’s new touring production of The Phantom of the Opera, celebrating the show’s 25th anniversary.

Hal directed the original 1986 production of Lloyd-Webber’s show, which is still playing in London and New York and has grossed over $5 billion worldwide.

If you cast your mind back to 2010, Mackintosh suffered a very public falling-out with Trevor Nunn over the “re-imagining” of the 25th anniversary touring production of Les Miserables. Nunn, co-director John Caird and designer John Napier were said to be furious that new directors, Laurence Connor and James Powell, and designer Matt Kinleywere, hired to give the show a touring makeover, including ditching the revolving barricades as these were too costly and complex to tour. Presumably the same will happen to the falling chandelier in Phantom.

As with the Les Mis tour, Mackintosh has recruited director Laurence Connor to stage the new version of Phantom and has even cast his Les Mis touring leads, John Owen-Jones and Earl Carpenter, to share the role of the Phantom.

Mackintosh has been careful to suggest in the press that the tour has Prince’s blessing, with Variety in March revealing than an “agreement” had been struck with Prince for the all-new version. But a September interview with Prince in the Huffington Post asked him whether he would change anything about the show if he had the chance to revisit it. “No, I would leave it alone”, he said, “it works”.

The UK touring production, directed by Laurence Connor, will feature choreography by Scott Ambler, set design by Paul Brown and costume design by original designer Maria Björnson. The production will be overseen by Cameron Mackintosh and Matthew Bourne and will premiere at the Theatre Royal Plymouth in March 2012. In addition to John Owen-Jones and Earl Carpenter sharing the Phantom role, Katie Hall will play Christine.

LINKS

Book tickets to The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty’s Theatre

The Phantom of the Opera UK tour information