MERCEDES RUEHL in The Prisoner of Second Avenue

American film and stage star to play Neil Simon comedy

Film and stage star Mercedes Ruehl will appear in the Old Vic in the West End’s new production of Neil Simon’s comedy The Prisoner of Second Avenue, at the Vaudeville Theatre from 30 June to 11 September.

In the show Ruehl stars as loyal wife Edna, who has to pick up the pieces when her husband, Mel, has a New York meltdown.

The play is directed by Terry Johnson, flush from his Tony Award success for La Cage Aux Folles, and also stars Hollywood’s Jeff Goldblum as Mel.

Mercedes Ruehl won an Oscar for her performance in The Fisher King and multiple awards including a Tony for her Broadway performance in Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers, alongside Old Vic Artistic Director Kevin Spacey.

Book tickets to The Prisoner of Second Avenue at the Vaudeville Theatre in London.

Old Vic to produce West End play

Jeff Goldblum is star in the Old Vic’s first foray into the West End

Kevin Spacey’s Old Vic theatre company will produce it’s first West End show this summer, as a new production of Neil Simon’s 1971 comedy The Prisoner of Second Avenue comes to town.

The play will star Hollywood actor Jeff Goldblum for a limited season at the Vaudeville Theatre from 13 July.

Terry Johnson will direct the show, whose credits include current Broadway hit La Cage Aux Folles with Kelsey Grammer, The Graduate with Kathleen Turner and Rain Man with Josh Hartnett.

Goldblum and Spacey are old friends, and appeared together at the Old Vic in 2008 in a revival of Speed-the-Plow.

“This is such an exciting development for the Old Vic and brings so many strong relationships together”, said Old Vic artistic director Kevin Spacey.

Book tickets to see Jeff Goldblum in the Prisoner of Second Avenue at the Vaudeville Theatre

Power couple top Stage poll

The Stage 100, the entertainment newspaper’s annual list of the 100 most powerful people in UK theatre, has placed Howard Panter and Rosemary Squire, joint chief executives of Ambassador Theatre Group, in first place.

The couple, who are both professional and personal partners, have topped both Cameron Mackintosh and Andrew Lloyd Webber in the list of the UK’s most senior arts professionals.

Their climb to first place follows their company’s acquisition in 2009 of Live Nation’s UK theatres, which they purchased for £90 million. The deal has made their ATG Group the largest theatre operator in both the West End and across the UK – with almost five times as many seats in their control as rivals.

The poll is usually dominated by Cameron Mackintosh (Les Miserables, Oliver!) and Andrew Lloyd Webber (The Phantom of the Opera, Love Never Dies) who have continually vied for top place, and come in this year at numbers two and three respectively. Other theatre producers in the list include Bill Kenwright (Blood Brothers, Dreamboats and Petticoats) in eighth place, Sonia Friedman (A Little Night Music, La Cage Aux Folles) in 12^th and David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers (Calendar Girls) in 13^th place.

Also in the top 20 of the poll are theatre performers Mark Rylance (Jerusalem) and John Barrowman (la Cage Aux Folles), artistic directors Dominic Cooke of the Royal Court, who rises six places to number seven, Kevin Spacey of the Old Vic at number 10,   Michael Grandage of the Donmar Warehouse,  recent New Year’s Honours List beneficiary Nicholas Hytner of the National Theatre and  Michael Boyd of the RSC.

The full top twenty is as follows [last year’s position]:

1. Howard Panter/Rosemary Squire (ATG) [5]

2. Cameron Mackintosh (producer/ theatre owner)[1]

3. Andrew Lloyd Webber (producer/ theatre owner / composer) [2]

4. Michael Grandage (Donmar Warehouse) [3=]

5. Nicholas Hytner (National Theatre) [3=]

6. Nica Burns / Max Weitzenhoffer (Nimax)[7]

7. Dominic Cooke (Royal Court Theatre)[13]

8. Bill Kenwright (Bill Kenwright Ltd) [6]

9. Michael Boyd (RSC) [8]

10. Kevin Spacey/ Sally Greene (Old Vic Theatre) [11]

11. Nick Thomas / Jon Conway (Qdos Entertainment) [9]

12. Sonia Friedman (Sonia Friedman Productions) [12]

13. David Pugh / Dafydd Rogers (producers) [18]

14. David Babani (Menier Chocolate Factory) [New Entry]

15. Jonathan Church (Chichester Festival Theatre) [16]

16. Bill Taylor (Stage Entertainment) [15]

17. Rupert Goold (director)[14]

18. Alex Poots (Manchester International Festival)[19]

19. John Barrowman (entertainer)[New Entry]

20. Mark Rylance (actor) [New Entry]

New Entry denotes new entry into top 20, not Stage 100

And the rest, by category

N denotes New Entry. i.e. they were not in last year’s Stage 100. There were 38 new entrants in total.

Directors

Howard Davies, Marianne Elliott , Jeremy Herrin (N) Simon McBurney (N) Sam Mendes /Caro Newling (N), Katie Mitchell, Trevor Nunn, Ian Rickson (N) Max Stafford Clarke (N), Matthew Warchus

London venues

Michael Attenborough, Marcus Davey, Dominic Dromgoole, Mehmet Ergen & Leyla Nazli (N), Sean Holmes (N) David Jubb / David Micklem, Jude Kelly, Nicolas Kent (N), David Lan, Kerry Michael, Josie Rourke, Timothy Sheader (N), Graham Sheffield

Producers

Judy Craymer, Michael Harrison, David Ian, Richard Jordan, Michael McCabe (N), Kim Poster, Nick Salmon / Matthew Byam Shaw (N), James Seabright (N), Thomas Schumacher (N), Edward Snape, Paul Walden and Derek Nicol (N), Kenny Wax, Carole Winter / Michael Edwards (N)

Regional

Hedda Beeby, Gemma Bodinetz, Ian Brown, Vicky Featherstone / John Tiffany, Andy Field / Debbie Pearson (N), Peter Hall, Tania Harrison, Paul Kerryson, Danny Moar (N), Braham Murray / Greg Hersov / Sarah Frankcom, Laurie Sansom (N) John Stalker, Rachel Tackley (N)

Performers

Michael Ball, Rebecca Hall (N), Clare Higgins, Rory Kinnear (N), Jude Law (N), Adrian Lester (N), Ian McKellen (N), Clive Rowe (N), Simon Russell Beale, Rachel Weisz (N), Samuel West

Playwrights

Alan Ayckbourn, Alan Bennett (N), Richard Bean, Jez Butterworth (N), Lee Hall, David Hare, Lucy Prebble (N), Polly Stenham, Simon Stephens (N), Roy Williams

Designers

Felix Barrett, Jon Bausor (N), Miriam Buether (N), Ultz (N)

Opera / Dance

Carlos Acosta (N), Matthew Bourne, Daniel Kramer (N), Antonio Pappano/ Monica Mason, Arlene Phillips (N), Alistair Spalding

http://blogs.thestage.co.uk/newsblog/2009/12/the-stage-100—in-full/index.html

London Theatre – 2009 Preview

If theatre mirrors life then you would expect 2009 to be a bad year for the performing arts in London: economic downturns and credit crunches sound like gloomy news for our discretionary entertainment spending. But West End theatre box office figures have kept on going up in recent years, and the huge number of new productions sailing into town during 2009 could mean that Theatreland manages to buck the trend.

THE GREAT REVIVAL

The RSC, National Theatre, Donmar and Old Vic dominated straight drama in the West End in 2008, and they haven’t finished yet. Big hitters coming to town include Judi Dench and Rosamund Pike in the Donmar in the West End’s Madame de Sade at the Wyndhams; Jude Law offering us his, hopefully fighting fit, Hamlet; Gillian Anderson in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Rachel Weisz in A Streetcar Named Desire at the Donmar Warehouse; Helen Mirren making her return to the London stage in Phaedra at the National Theatre; and a number of crowd-pleasing revivals at the Old Vic, no more so than Dancing at Lughnasa, Brian Friel’s hugely successful play starring Andrea Corr, and Sam Mendes directing Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, both featuring Ethan Hawke, Simon Russell Beale and Sinead Cusack.

STAR POWER

Other stars shimmying into town include Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at the Haymarket, Ken Stott and Hayley Atwell in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge at the Duke of York’s, heavy-hitter Pete Postlethwaite as King Lear at the Young Vic, and Antony Sher giving us his Prospero in the RSC’s The Tempest. The Gavin and Stacey phenomenon continues to roll on, as we see Joe Orton’s delicious romp Entertaining Mr Sloane at the Trafalgar Studios starring Gavin himself, Matthew Horne, alongside Imelda Staunton; whilst Gavin’s onscreen Mum Alison Steadman plays a barking Leeds housewife in Alan Bennett’s Enjoy at the Gielgud Theatre.

NEW PLAYS

The sharp eyed amongst you will notice that all of these plays are revivals rather than new work, keeping audiences firmly in their comfort zones. That said, new plays may be thin on the ground but not absent all together, with the National offering up Richard Bean’s England People Very Nice, following two lovers across four centuries, and Samuel Adamson’s Mrs Affleck set in the 1950s. Jez Butterworth has two new plays in pre-production, with comedy Parlour Song at the Almeida and Jerusalem at the Royal Court. Also at the Royal Court, Mark Ravenhill will bring his new play Over There. Plus Hollywood man of the moment James McAvoy is to star in Richard Greenberg’s acclaimed play Three Days of Rain at the Apollo, and at The Old Vic Richard Dreyfuss headlines the world premiere of American playwright Joe Sutton’s new play Complicit, directed by Kevin Spacey.

“BASED ON A FILM”

In musical theatre, 2009 promises to be a year of great big fabulous and familiar shows, surely enough to see us through the dark times? And it’s no coincidence that many of them are based on hugely successful films.

Oliver! will be well and truly steaming ahead through 2009 at the Drury Lane Theatre Royal with Rowan Atkinson and Jodie Prenger; La Cage Aux Folles will continue camping it up at the Playhouse but with Graham Norton taking over from Douglas Hodge; and at the Adelphi Theatre Lee Mead will bow out of Joseph to be replaced by Gareth Gates.

Jason Donovan will be donning the wigs and lip gloss to take us on an Australian power-mince in Priscilla Queen of the Desert at the Palace Theatre. And Sister Act at the London Palladium will be doing its best to recreate the fun of the film, helped along by Whoopi Goldberg as co-producer. And not quite a musical but as good as, Calendar Girls the stage play will up the naked flesh quotient in the West End, starring Patricia Hodge and Lynda Bellingham at the Noel Coward Theatre.

Also in musicals-land the power of reality TV continues to wield its power, with Gareth Gates going into Joseph at the Adelphi Theatre, the X-factor’s Niki Evans continuing in Blood Brothers at the Phoenix, Jodie Prenger in Oliver at the Drury Lane, and Ray Quinn and Danny Bayne in Grease – joined for a limited time by the legendary Jimmy Osmond.

KIDS RULE

Kids should also see a good year in 2009 with an enormous live theatrical production of Walking with Dinosaurs coming to a stadium near you, and War Horse transfers from its successful run at the National Theatre to the New London Theatre.

Book these show

« Previous Page