Closing Time: End of the Rainbow, Ghost Stories, Dirty Dancing depart the West End

It’s all change in the West End over the next few weeks as a number of high-profile West End shows bring down their curtains for the final time, including Tracie Bennett in End of the Rainbow, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, In A Forest, Dark And Deep, Flare Path and Dirty Dancing.

Tracie Bennett may have missed out on an Olivier award this year for her stellar performance as Judy Garland in Peter Quilter’s End of the Rainbow at the Trafalgar Studios, but audiences and critics have hailed the show a massive hit. With a UK tour planned and rumours that the show may now go on to Broadway, Bennett won’t be putting down the whiskey bottle just yet. But her bravura performance in London will come to an end on 21 May.

Also on the 21 May, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg will depart the Gielgud Theatre starring Joanna Riding and Meow Meow. There was much anticipation for Kneehigh’s return to the West End following its smash-hit production of Brief Encounter, but the show didn’t click with critics and swiftly announced its closing notices. However, Joanna Riding will be spared having to pack up her knick-knacks from her dressing room as she is remaining at the Gielgud to star in Lend Me A Tenor, from 2 June.

Trevor Nunn’s bullet-proof production of Terence Rattigan’s Flare Path closes on 11 June at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. The play, which stars Sienna Miller, Sheridan Smith and James Purefoy, will make way for another Nunn production, this time his Chichester Festival Theatre revival of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead from 16 June featuring Tim Curry, Samuel Barnett and Jamie Parker.

The West End has been doubly terrified over the past year with both The Woman in Black and Ghost Stories scaring audiences senseless. The Woman in Black is still going strong, and is promised a boost from a forthcoming movie adaptation of the classic ghost story starring Daniel Radcliffe. But the Lyric Hammersmith transfer of Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s spine-tingling Ghost Stories is ending its run, finishing up at the Duke of York’s Theatre on 19 June.

Director-of-the-moment Thea Sharrock’s current West End productions, running at the Apollo Theatre and Old Vic, both come to an end in June. Her revival of Rattigan’s Cause Celebre starring Anne-Marie Duff ends at the Old Vic on 11 June, swiftly followed on 18 June by her production of Noel Coward’s comedy Blithe Spirit at the Apollo Theatre starring Alison Steadman and Ruthie Henshall.

The show that has done more than any other to shift the audience profile of the West End is leaving the Aldwych Theatre on 9 July after an impressive run of just under 4 years. Dirty Dancing, based on the hit 80′s movie, is off on a UK tour but the original London production, which has inspired a myriad of also-rans and shown them how its done, is still the one to see.

Also closing in the next few weeks are two high-profile plays: Mike Leigh’s Ecstasy at the Duchess Theatre, closing on 28 May, and Neil LaBute’s play In A Forest, Dark And Deep, which ends its run at the Vaudeville Theatre on 4 June, starring Matthew Fox and Olivia Williams as dysfunctional siblings in this dark comedy come psychological thriller.

AND OPENING SOON…

Shows closing in the West End means a raft of new productions opening in London this summer.

Plays and musicals opening shortly in London include soon-to-be artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse Josie Rourke’s new production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing at the Wyndham’s Theatre, starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate as the sparring Beatrice and Benedick (from 16 May); a new production of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, which kicks off the 2011 season at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park (from 19 May); Eve Best in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing at Shakespeare’s Globe (from 21 May); Kristin Scott Thomas in Harold Pinter’s Betrayal at the Comedy Theatre (from 27 May); Dominic West in Simon Gray’s Butley at the Duchess Theatre (from 1 June); Broadway musical Lend Me A Tenor at the Gielgud Theatre starring Joanna Riding (from 2 June);  The Flying Karamazov Brothers come crashing into the Vaudeville Theatre with much kilt wearing, flame throwing and general madcap hysteria (from 9 June); Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead starring featuring Tim Curry, Samuel Barnett and Jamie Parker at the Theatre Royal Haymarket (from 16 June); Kevin Spacey as Richard III in Sam Mendes’s new production of Shakespeare’s play at the Old Vic (from 18 June); a big-budget new movie-to-stage musical comes to town as Ghost The Musical opens at the Piccadilly Theatre starring Caissie Levy, Richard Fleeshman and Sharon D Clarke, with music by Dave Stewart (from 22 June); and early July sees the return of classic TV comedy Yes, Prime Minister, at the Apollo Theatre (from 6 July).

LINKS

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A-Z listing of West End Shows

Terence Rattigan exhibition opens today at the British Library

The British Library in London opens a new exhibition today, 5 April 2011, presenting their archive on famous British playwright Terence Rattigan.

Timed to celebrate Rattigan’s centenary this year, “Nothing is ever as it seems…” in the British Library’s Treasures Gallery runs until July 2011 (free entry) and reveals a series of items from his archive.

Items featured include the original scripts of Cause Célèbre, which is currently playing at the Old Vic Theatre in London, Flare Path – which Trevor Nunn has directed at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, his first stage play, First Episode, and his 1938 play Follow my Leader.

The collection also presents photographs and letters of the playwright, including letters bought for only £22 from an antique bookshop by an eagle-eyed British Library curator.

Kathryn Johnson, the British Library’s Curator of Theatrical Manuscripts, said that the current successful revivals of his plays, including Thea Sharrock’s National Theatre production of After The Dance last year, shows that “the audiences and critics who once prized the writer for his theatrical craftsmanship, his characterisation, and his humane response to the emotional dilemmas of ordinary people were not simply lulled into that response by a master manipulator.”

Rattigan was only the second English playwright to be knighted in the 20th century, and interest in his life and work is set to continue apace leading up to his centenary on 10 June.

British Library, Monday to Sunday until July 2011.

EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS

1. First Episode (1933) – Rattigan’s first staged play. Typescript with autograph amendments.
Rattigan wrote First Episode while an undergraduate at Trinity College, Oxford, in collaboration with his friend, Philip Heimann. The play was produced at the Q Theatre, a small theatre near Kew Bridge in London with a reputation for staging new and experimental work. Drawing on Rattigan’s and Heimann’s Oxford experiences, First Episode is set in an undergraduate lodging house and shows four young men whose lives are turned upside down by the arrival of two professional actresses to take leading roles in the university dramatic society’s latest production. Recurring themes of Rattigan’s mature writing are already present – incompatible lovers, and characters caught between physical desire and the dictates of reason and society.

2. Follow My Leader (1938) – original version refused a licence by the Lord Chamberlain. Typescript with annotations. Written in collaboration with Anthony Maurice and submitted for licence in July 1938. (Until the passing of the Theatres Act in 1968, every play intended for public performance in Great Britain had to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office to obtain a licence.) Rattigan’s sprightly satirical farce poked fun not just at Hitler and the Nazis and Mussolini and the Italian fascists but also at those in authority in Britain who sought to appease them. But the Lord Chamberlain took fright and passed the script to the Foreign Office who were adamant that nothing calculated to offend a friendly foreign power should appear on the stage. A licence was refused until January 1940, by which time the play’s moment had passed, and Follow My Leader had a short and very disappointing run.

3. Flare Path: original script, under its original title of Next of Kin (1942).
When this script was sent for licence in 1942, the Lord Chamberlain insisted that it should be sent to the Air Ministry for vetting before he issued a licence. In the event the Ministry asked for only minor changes while the Lord Chamberlain, as ever, nitpicked over language. The play is set in the residents’ lounge of a hotel close to an RAF bomber station somewhere on the South Coast, beginning early one evening as a surprise mission disrupts the plans of a bomber crew and their wives, and ending the following morning, with the women greeting their husbands on their return from the bombing raid. The play’s success was assured when Churchill attended a performance in January 1943 at the insistence of his wife Clementine, and told the cast afterwards, “I was very moved ….. It is a masterpiece of understatement. But we are rather good at that, aren’t we?”

4. Cause Célèbre (also known as A Woman of Principle), 1975: original script of radio version.
Cause Célèbre was inspired by the Rattenbury & Stoner murder trial of 1935; Rattigan acknowledges that he took the bare bones of his play from the account of the trial edited by F. Tennyson Jesse in the Notable British Trials series. BBC Radio broadcast this version in October 1975: it opens at the beginning of the trial, and events leading up to the murder are conveyed in a series of flashbacks.

5. Letter from Terence Rattigan to Robin Midgley, director of the stage play Cause Célèbre; April 1977.
The stage version of Cause Célèbre encountered any number of difficulties. Rattigan was commissioned to rewrite the radio script for the stage in time for production in autumn 1976, but because of difficulties in casting, and his increasing weakness from terminal cancer, it was only in January 1977 that Rattigan began work with Robin Midgely, the artistic director of the Haymarket Theatre Leicester to rewrite and reconstruct the radio play as a stage work. This letter, recently acquired by the British Library, speaks eloquently of Rattigan’s continued stage craftsmanship and his determination in the face of constant pain. The final version was premiered at Her Majesty’s Theatre in the Haymarket in July 1977: Rattigan died at his house in Bermuda less than five months later.

LINKS

British Library website – Plan Your Visit
Book tickets to Flare Path at the Theatre Royal Haymarket
Book tickets to Cause Celebre at the Old Vic Theatre

Photos: Anne-Marie Duff in Cause Celebre at the Old Vic Theatre

Production photos of Terence Rattigan’s Cause Celebre at the Old Vic Theatre

Thea Sharrock (Blithe Spirit) directs Terence Rattigan’s final play, Cause Celebre at the Old Vic Theatre, starring Anne-Marie Duff and Niamh Cusack.

The play is based on the  true story of Alma Rattenbury (Anne-Marie Duff), who was put on trial in 1935 along with her 18-year-old lover, accused of killing her husband. Vilified by the public as much for her seduction of a younger man as the murder of her husband, the play examines the role of passion, guilt and loyalty in 1930s England. Niamh Cusack plays socially and sexually repressed jury forewoman of the trial, Edith Davenport.

The play also stars Lucy Black, Timothy Carlton, Simon Chandler, Richard Clifford, Oliver Coopersmith, Rory Fleck-Byrne, Freddie Fox, Jenny Galloway, Patrick Godfrey, Nicholas Jones, Tommy McDonnell, Lucy Robinson, Tristan Shepherd, Richard Teverson, Sarah Waddell, Michael Webber and Tristram Wymark.

LINKS

Book tickets to Cause Celebre at the Old Vic Theatre in London

Cause Celebre – news and photos

Cause Celebre – Reviews Round-up

A round-up of reviews for Cause Celebre at the Old Vic Theatre in London

Terence Rattigan’s final play, Cause Celebre, has opened at the Old Vic Theatre in London starring Anne-Marie Duff and Niamh Cusack.

The play is based on the  true story of Alma Rattenbury (Anne-Marie Duff), who was put on trial in 1935 along with her 18-year-old lover, accused of killing her husband. Vilified by the public as much for her seduction of a younger man as the murder of her husband, the play examines the role of passion, guilt and loyalty in 1930s England. Niamh Cusack plays socially and sexually repressed jury forewoman of the trial, Edith Davenport.

Thea Sharrock, who directed an Olivier award-winning production of Rattigan’s After the Dance at the National Theatre last year, directs the play following her recent revival of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit at the Apollo Theatre.

The play also stars Lucy Black, Timothy Carlton, Simon Chandler, Richard Clifford, Oliver Coopersmith, Rory Fleck-Byrne, Freddie Fox, Jenny Galloway, Patrick Godfrey, Nicholas Jones, Tommy McDonnell, Lucy Robinson, Tristan Shepherd, Richard Teverson, Sarah Waddell, Michael Webber and Tristram Wymark.

Read reviews from the Times, Telegraph, Hollywood Reporter, Express and Evening Standard, below.

LINKS

Book tickets to Cause Celebre at the Old Vic Theatre in London

Cause Celebre – news and photos

Tennessee Williams: The silent centenary

We don’t like to moan (much) but where are all the London productions celebrating the late, great Tennessee Williams?

His centenary falls this week, 26 March, but you would hardly know given the absence of any major London productions of his work. So hats off to the tiny Cock Tavern Theatre for running its current centenary season, including lost play I Never Get Dressed Till After Dark On Sunday.

Whilst home-grown talent such as Terence Rattigan deserve the incredible attention that his centenary is garnering this year (last year’s After the Dance, this year’s Cause Celebre and Flare Path to name but three), we would have liked to see something major in London to mark the occasion of Tennessee’s birth.

Williams may be constantly revived in the UK, the Donmar’s 2009 production of A Streetcar Named Desire starring Rachel Weisz being a good recent example, but his extraordinary influence on world theatre, and especially British theatre, deserves some recognition around his actual centenary.

LINKS

Cock Tavern Theatre

Wikipedia: Tennessee Williams

FREDDIE FOX in Cause Celebre

Up and coming Freddie Fox, from the Fox acting dynasty, to star in Rattigan’s Cause Celebre at the Old Vic Theatre

It’s hard to find a young actor better connected to the profession than Freddie Fox, 21.

Son of actors Edward Fox and Joanna David, brother to Emilia Fox, nephew of James Fox, cousin of Laurence Fox, godson of John Mortimer, great grandson of famous dramatist Frederick Lonsdale, the list goes on and on.

Fox only graduated from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama last year, but has immediately found work – notably in two major TV dramas, playing 80s pop star Marilyn in the BBC’s Boy George biopic Worried About the Boy and the young version of writer Peter Scabius in Any Human Heart, the high-profile Channel 4 adaptation of William Boyd’s novel.

Up next he plays a bisexual assassin in BBC thriller-noir The Shadow Line alongside an impressive cast that includes Christopher Eccleston, Sir Antony Sher, Stephen Rea and Chiwetel Ejiofor. And he won’t have to travel far to get to work in Cause Celebre: Freddie can be currently seen starring as cleft-palated Camille in Feydeau’s farce A Flea In Her Ear at the Old Vic, opposite Tom Hollander.

Cause Celebre also stars Anne-Marie Duff, Niamh Cusack, Lucy Black, Timothy Carlton, Simon Chandler, Richard Clifford, Oliver Coopersmith, Rory Fleck-Byrne, Jenny Galloway, Patrick Godfrey, Nicholas Jones, Tommy McDonnell, Lucy Robinson, Tristan Shepherd, Richard Teverson, Sarah Waddell, Michael Webber and Tristram Wymark.

The play opens at the Old Vic Theatre on 29 March 2011, with previews from 17 March. It is based on the  true story of Alma Rattenbury, who was put on trial in 1935 along with her 18-year-old lover, accused of killing her husband. Vilified by the public as much for her seduction of a younger man as the murder of her husband, the play examines the role of passion, guilt and loyalty in 1930s England.

Thea Sharrock directed Rattigan’s After the Dance at the National Theatre earlier this year and will direct Alison Steadman in Blithe Spirit from 2 March 2011 at the Apollo Theatre.

Book tickets to see Cause Celebre at the Old Vic Theatre in London

NIAMH CUSACK in Cause Celebre

Niamh Cusack to star alongside Anne-Marie Duff in Rattigan’s Cause Celebre at the Old Vic

Niamh Cusack returns to the London stage this spring in Thea Sharrock’s revival of Terence Rattigan’s Cause Celebre, timed for the writer’s centenary in 2011.

Cusack, whose father was acclaimed Irish actor Cyril Cusack and her sister Sinead is also an accomplished actress, has worked extensively in theatre, film and  TV. Stage roles include Dancing at Lughnasa at The Old Vic, Portrait Of A Lady at the Theatre Royal Bath and His Dark Materials at The National Theatre. TV work includes The Last Detective and Heartbeat and film roles include The Closer You Get, Playboys and Shadow Under The Sun.

Cause Celebre also stars Anne-Marie Duff, Lucy Black, Timothy Carlton, Simon Chandler, Richard Clifford, Oliver Coopersmith, Rory Fleck-Byrne, Freddie Fox, Jenny Galloway, Patrick Godfrey, Nicholas Jones, Tommy McDonnell, Lucy Robinson, Tristan Shepherd, Richard Teverson, Sarah Waddell, Michael Webber and Tristram Wymark.

The play opens at the Old Vic Theatre on 29 March 2011, with previews from 17 March. It is based on the  true story of Alma Rattenbury, who was put on trial in 1935 along with her 18-year-old lover, accused of killing her husband. Vilified by the public as much for her seduction of a younger man as the murder of her husband, the play examines the role of passion, guilt and loyalty in 1930s England. Cusack plays socially and sexually repressed jury forewoman of the trial, Edith Davenport.

Thea Sharrock directed Rattigan’s After the Dance at the National Theatre earlier this year and will direct Alison Steadman in Blithe Spirit from 2 March 2011 at the Apollo Theatre.

Book tickets to see Cause Celebre at the Old Vic Theatre in London

NIAMH CUSACK – CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

Theatre Gate Theatre Dublin: Hester Worsley in A Woman of No Importance, Irina in Three Sisters, Nora in A Doll’s House; RSC: Desdemona in Othello, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Jane Hogarth in The Art of Success, Rosalind in As You Like It; West Yorkshire Playhouse: Pegeen Mike in The Playboy of the Western World, Gemma in Captain Swing; Lady Mary in The Admirable Crichton (Theatre Royal Haymarket), Gustchen in The Tutor (Old Vic), Nora Clitheroe in The Plough and the Stars (Young Vic), Irina in Three Sisters (Royal Exchange Manchester), Helena in The Faerie Queen (Aix-en-Provence), The Maids (Donmar), Nabokov’s Gloves, Molière’s Learned Ladies, Portia in The Merchant of Venice (Chichester Festival Theatre), Serafina Pekkala in His Dark Materials, Ghosts (Gate London); Television Lucky Sunil, Poirot, Till We Meet Again, Jeeves and Wooster, Heartbeat, Angel Train, Shadow of the Sun, Colour Blind, Rhinoceros, Little Bird, A&E, Loving You, Too Good to be True, State of Mind; Films Paris By Night, Fools of Fortune, The Playboys, The Closer You Get; Awards Irish Life Award, Irish Post Award.

ANNE-MARIE DUFF in Cause Celebre

Thea Sharrock casts Anne-Marie Duff in her revival of Rattigan’s Cause Celebre at the Old Vic

Mrs James McAvoy is back on stage in the West End this spring as she takes the lead in Thea Sharrock’s revival of Terence Rattigan’s Cause Celebre, timed for the writer’s centenary in 2011.

Anne-Marie trained at the Drama Centre in London and her career to-date has garnered much praise across TV, film and stage.

She was nominated for an Ian Charleson Award for her performance in King Lear at the National in 1997 and has performed a number of times at the venue including Collected Stories, War and Peace, Le Grande Magia and most recently Saint Joan, where she won Evening Standard, South Bank Show Award and Critics’ Circle awards for her performance.

TV includes playing Elizabeth in The Virgin Queen, Channel 4′s Shameless, where she met her husband James McAvoy, and TV movie Margot as Margot Fonteyn.

Film work includes Nowhere Boy, The Last Station, Notes on a Scandal, The Magdalene Sisters and Enigma.

Cause Celebre opens at the Old Vic Theatre on 29 March 2011, with previews from 17 March.

Based on a true story, Ann-Marie plays Alma Rattenbury who was put on trial in 1935, along with her 18-year-old lover, accused of killing her husband. Vilified by the public as much for her seduction of a younger man as the murder of her husband, the play examines the role of passion, guilt and loyalty in 1930s England.

Thea Sharrock directed Rattigan’s After the Dance at the National Theatre earlier this year and will direct Alison Steadman in Blithe Spirit from 2 March 2011 at the Apollo Theatre.

Book tickets to see Cause Celebre at the Old Vic Theatre in London

Cause Celebre tickets at the Old Vic Theatre starring Anne-Marie Duff

Thea Sharrock follows her hit revival of Terence Rattigan’s After The Dance with the playwright’s drama based on the true story of Alma Rattenbury, played by Anne-Marie Duff, who went on trial with her 18-year-old lover for the murder of her husband. Also stars Niamh Cusack.

New Old Vic season launched

Kevin Spacey pulls out the stops for his 7th year at the Old Vic with three heavy-weight directors

Hollywood actor and Old Vic artistic director Kevin Spacey has announced a new season of plays at the Old Vic Theatre in London.

Now in his seventh year at the theatre, Spacey revealed that he has attracted three of Britain’s leading directors to helm three revivals during 2010 and 2011.

Anthony Page, whose credits include last year’s Waiting for Godot on Broadway, will direct Noël Coward’s Design For Living, playing at the theatre from 3 September to 27 November 2010. The play will star Tom Burke (Telstar), Andrew Scott (Lennon Naked) and Lisa Dillon (Cranford). Written in 1932, the comedy concerns the complicated three-way relationship between two men and a woman.

Richard Eyre, who recently directed Kim Cattrall in Private Lives at the Vaudeville Theatre, will direct Georges Feydeau’s 1907 French farce A Flea In Her Ear, in a version by John Mortimer, from 4 December 2010 to 5 March 2011. The production will star Tom Hollander (In The Loop) and Lisa Dillon.

Finally, Thea Sharrock, who has enjoyed enormous success for her current National Theatre staging of Terence Rattigan’s After The Dance, will return to the playwright in his centenary year with a revival of his final play, Cause Célèbre, from 17 March to 11 June 2011.

Sharrock will also direct Alison Steadman in a new production of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, coming to the Apollo Theatre from March 2011.

Spacey commented on the new season: “These are three great plays that all rather brilliantly explore the attitudes of their time and offer wonderful roles to actors.”

Current shows at the Old Vic and the Old Vic in the West End:

Book tickets to Design For Living at the Old Vic Theatre

Book tickets to A Flea In Her Ear at the Old Vic Theatre

Book tickets to Cause Célèbre at the Old Vic Theatre

Book tickets to The Tempest at the Old Vic Theatre

Book tickets to As You Like It at the Old Vic Theatre

Book tickets to see The Prisoner of Second Avenue at the Vaudeville Theatre