War Horse tickets at the New London Theatre
August 1, 2010
The National Theatre’s epic, Olivier Award-winning World War I family drama based on the celebrated novel by Michael Morpurgo and featuring actors working with life-sized puppets.
London theatre – summer preview
April 7, 2009
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London theatre is pulling out all of the stops this summer to ensure that the capital’s theatre scene remains a chief attraction for millions of UK and overseas visitors.
A host of big hitting stars and large scale musicals are lined up to showcase a range of new productions, including performances by Jude Law, Helen Mirren, Ethan Hawke, Gillian Anderson and Ian McKellen.
The death of drama in the West End has been greatly exaggerated given the wide ranging slate of classic and contemporary plays premiering this summer. One of the most high profile will be Jude Law, taking to the stage in Shakespeare’s most famous play, Hamlet, directed by Michael Grandage as part of his Donmar in the West End season. A strong supporting cast includes Penelope Wilton as Gertrude and Kevin McNally as Claudius, from 29 May at the Wyndham’s Theatre.
- Hamlet with Jude Law
From Danes to Dames and Helen Mirren returns to London and the National Theatre from 4 June in Racine’s tragic play Phedre. The play concerns a woman (Mirren) consumed by passion for her stepson, which is highly plausible given that the stepson is played by hot young thing and Mamma Mia! The Movie star Dominic Cooper.
Helen Mirren starred in successful British movie Calendar Girls – which is now coming to the stage in a brand new production starring Patricia Hodge and Sian Phillips. Written by Tim Firth, the story of a group of middle-aged Women’s Institute members who pose for a calendar with a difference is playing at the Noel Coward Theatre.
Stage legends Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart are reuniting after their onscreen antics in the X-Men movies to give us Waiting for Godot at the Haymarket Theatre from 20 April, in what promises to be a standout production of Samuel Beckett’s classic.
- Waiting for Godot with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart
Talents from New York and London will converge at The Old Vic from 23 May for The Bridge Project – a three year partnership between The Old Vic, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Neal Street Productions. Academy Award-winning director Sam Mendes will direct a new version of The Cherry Orchard plus Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, in a cast that features Ethan Hawke, Simon Russell Beale, Sinead Cusack and recent star of Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona, Rebecca Hall.
The Cherry Orchard is a new translation by Tom Stoppard, who will also see his 1993 play Arcadia revived in a new production at the Duke of York’s Theatre starring his son Ed Stoppard and Samantha Bond and Dan Stevens. In its first run at the National Theatre the play won a slew of awards including Critics’ Circle, Evening Standard and Olivier Awards.
Other notable players making their way into town include Prunella Scales (Fawlty Towers) in Carrie’s War at the Apollo Theatre, and Gillian Anderson, who will star in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at the Donmar Warehouse, joining a stellar cast that includes Christopher Eccleston, Toby Stephens, Tara Fitzgerald and Anton Lesser.
Musical theatre is firmly “based on a film” this year as a blockbuster stage production of Sister Act joins a West End brimming with adaptations of movies, including recent addition Priscilla Queen of the Desert starring Jason Donovan and long-runners Hairspray with Michael Ball, Dirty Dancing, The Lion King, Billy Elliot, Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Sunset Boulevard – and Grease, which will star Dancing on Ice winner Ray Quinn as Danny from 11 May.
- Sister Act with Sheila Hancock and Patina Miller
Sister Act, which runs from 7 May at the London Palladium, is produced by the film’s original star Whoopi Goldberg and features Sheila Hancock and rising star Patina Miller, with music courtesy of Alan Menken (Disney’s Beauty & The Beast).
Other movie-to-stage shows on the horizon include the Broadway production of Legally Blond opening at the Savoy Theatre at the end of the year and a stage adaptation of Oscar winning film Ghost, directed by Matthew Warchus, set for 2010.
Chief amongst the new musicals opening in London in the later part of 2009 will be Andrew Lloyd Webber’s world premiere of The Phantom of the Opera sequel Love Never Dies at the Adelphi Theatre in early November. The show is set to star current London Phantom Ramin Karimloo and will follow its London opening with productions in Toronto, Shanghai and then Broadway.
A number of shows that have run successfully in other venues are also making their way into the West End including Juliet Stevenson (Truly Madly Deeply) and Henry Goodman in Duet For One at the Vaudeville Theatre; the acclaimed production of Steven Sondheim’s A Little Night Music starring Maureen Lipman at the Garrick Theatre; the National Theatre’s War Horse, a family drama set during World War I about a boy’s adventures to find his beloved horse, at the New London theatre; and following its smash-hit run on Broadway – a new UK production of uber hip musical Spring Awakening at the Novello Theatre.
- Spring Awakening at the Novello Theatre
Other long running musicals that continue to extend their runs and pack them in include Avenue Q – now at the Gielgud Theatre, Blood Brothers, We Will Rock You, Chicago, Wicked, Jersey Boys, Stomp, Oliver!, Mamma Mia!, Les Miserables, Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Joseph, Roger’s and Hammerstein’s Carousel, Thriller Live featuring the songs of Michael Jackson and an award-winning production of La Cage Aux Folles.
Long-running plays in London include scary thriller The Woman in Black, hilarious comedy The 39 Steps based on Alfred Hitchcock’s film and Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap.
Finally, the V&A Museum in London has opened its new Theatre and Performance galleries following the closure of the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden in 2007. The new galleries will celebrate the UK’s heritage in culture and performance with hundreds of exhibits including costumes, set models, stage props, original posters and playbills, theatrical prints, paintings and photographs from some of London’s most famous theatrical productions.
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Transfer News: Juliet Stevenson, Avenue Q, Prunella Scales and War Horse
March 17, 2009
It’s all change in the West End as a number of shows close to make way for transfers from other theatres. In an increasingly risk-averse climate for producers, a hit in a small venue or success in a limited run could mean money if it transfers into the West End. The subsidised National Theatre and Almeida are bringing in War Horse and Duet for One respectively, Cameron Mackintosh decides to keep Avenue Q running and Carrie’s War and Saturday Night transfer from smaller venues.
Duet For One
The Almeida’s recently acclaimed production Duet for One will transfer to the West End in May.
Tom Kempinski’s two-hander stars Juliet Stevenson and Henry Goodman and centres on a concert violinist (Stevenson) who goes to a psychiatrist (Goodman) in the wake of a tragedy.
Directed by Matthew Lloyd, it will transfer to the Vaudeville Theatre from 7th May.
Avenue Q
There’s nothing like the threat of missing out to boost a show. Avenue Q - which has already run for 3 years at the Noel Coward Theatre, had announced its closure to make way for Calendar Girls.
But a new demand for tickets to catch the show before it exits London has promoted Cameron Mackintosh to transfer it to another one of his theatres – this time the Gielgud. It will reside there from 1 June.
Avenue Q will replace Enjoy starring Alison Steadman and David Troughton.
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Carrie’s War
Heart-warming family drama Carrie’s War – about two young evacuees during the Second World War and based on the classic kid’s novel by Nina Bawden is transferring from Sadler’s Wells into the West End.
Much loved actress Prunella Scales stars in the play, which will begin on 18 June at the Apollo Theatre. The show also stars Sarah Edwardson, who reprises the role of Carrie, and Amanda Symonds and James Beddard.
Carrie’s War will replace Three Days of Rain at the Apollo, currently starring James McAvoy.
SAVE £16.50 ON TICKETS TO CARRIE’S WAR
SAVE £14 ON TICKETS TO THREE DAYS OF RAIN
War Horse
From World War II to the First World War – and the opening this month in the West End of the National Theatre’s critically smash-hit War Horse – galloping across the river from the National to the New London Theatre from next week – 28th March.
The award-winning adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s novel, set during World War I,is directed by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris, and is told using the puppetry of the South African Handspring Puppet Company – including life-size horses and a tank!
Sondheim’s Saturday Night
Stephen Sondheim’s first Broadway musical Saturday Night will at long last enjoy a West End premiere, despite being penned by Sondheim in the 1950s.
After selling out run the Jermyn Street Theatre, it will come to the Arts Theatre for a short run from 25 March. Set it New York just before the Wall Street crash of 1929, the show stars Helena Blackman, who was runner up in the BBC1 talent show “How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria?”
London Theatre – 2009 Preview
December 30, 2008
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.
Gone With The Wind Review
May 29, 2008
Quite apart from garnering some pretty damning reviews, Trevor Nunn’s production of Gone With the Wind, at the New London Theatre, has also provided a springboard for several showbiz writers to bounce off memories of some of the most disastrous musicals in the West End has ever seen.
This ignominious roll call of unmitigated ineptitude includes the likes of Bernadette, Kings and Clowns, Blondel, Twang, Carrie, Leonardo and The Hunting of the Snark.
So, is Gone With the Wind bad enough to add to that list? The answer is emphatically no. It’s far too boring and bland for that. The Bernadettes and Twangs of the world were so irredeemably terrible that they were actually a lot of fun and I wouldn’t have missed them for the world. Not so Gone With the Wind which, at its best, is borderline competent.
What really does the show in, and no mistake about it, is its length. I know the screen version is even longer, but that had Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, stunning Technicolor photography, spectacularly cinematic set-pieces and a score by the great Max Steiner that, frankly, my dear, is a lot better than Margaret Martin’s.
And given this wan stage incarnation’s inordinate length, was it really necessary for adapter/director Trevor Nunn to add to the running time by having actors on stage narrate what is plainly visible for all to see? For example, when Scarlett O’Hara joins her family for dinner at Tara, do we need to be told so when we can see it for ourselves? In the film version Scarlett has only one child, yet in the book she has three, as, indeed, she does in the stage show, even though the first two are barely glimpsed and hardly referred to.
At the same time, memorable scenes such as Scarlett’s shooting of the Yankee deserter (which here gets an unwanted laugh) and the famous moment in which Scarlett vows she’ll never be hungry again, go for nought.
As for that wonderfully dramatic sequence in which Rhett Butler forces a humiliated Scarlett to attend Melanie’s party after she has been caught in a compromising situation with Ashley, it’s gone completely. Go figure. If length is the show’s main liability, the situation isn’t helped by John Napier’s really unattractive all-purpose set in which Tara, the glittering symbol of ante-bellum grandeur, looks little more than a wooden hovel in some Southern shanty town. As for the burning of Atlanta, a few loud bangs, flashes of orange lighting, a bit of smoke and a collapsing façade or two is all you get.
Though I found Jill Paice’s Scarlett a tad shrill and common, she looked the part, as did Darius Danesh as Rhett. Trouble is, there’s not an iota of chemistry between them. Or a decent song. If Olivia de Havilland in the film was too good to be true as Melanie, Madeleine Worrall made this most colourless of roles even more so; while Edward Baker-Duly, as Ashley Wilkes, though better looking than the movie’s Leslie Howard, made little impression because his dialogue never allowed him to. Natasha Yvette Williams and Jina Burrows as Mammy and Prissy, two of author Margaret Mitchell’s more memorable characters, made the most of the few opportunities they were given to shine.
There have been worse musicals than Gone With the Wind but none quite as pointless.
CLIVE HIRSCHHORN. Courtesy of This Is London.
GONE WITH THE WIND – NEW LONDON THEATRE
