Betty Blue Eyes opens bookings
December 1, 2010
Booking has opened for new Cameron Mackintosh musical Betty Blue Eyes, coming into the West End this Spring.
Stars of Betty Blue Eyes Sarah Lancashire and Reece Shearsmith
The new show, which is based on Alan Bennett and Malcolm Mowbray’s acclaimed screenplay A Private Function, has been penned by Mackintosh protégées George Stiles (music) and Anthony Drewe (lyrics), with a book by Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman.
Richard Eyre will direct the show, which previews from 19 March 2011 at the Novello Theatre.
The musical is a move back to new work for the Les Miserables producer, whose recent projects have been revivals of hit shows such as Mary Poppins and Oliver!, or transfers of Broadway shows Avenue Q and Hair. “Betty Blue Eyes is my first original musical in over ten years”, said Mackintosh. “As a long-time admirer of Alan Bennett’s wickedly funny screenplay for the film A Private Function, I immediately fell in love with this infectious and delicious musical treatment which has expanded on the original”.
The show will see Sarah Lancashire (Coronation Street, Seeing Red) as Joyce Chilvers, played in the 1984 movie by Maggie Smith. Lancashire will be returning to the West End after her brief appearance in Guys & Dolls in 2005. Her hen-pecked husband in the show, Gilbert, will be played by Reece Shearsmith (The League of Gentlemen).
The story is set in a small Yorkshire village just after the Second World War. When the locals want to celebrate the forthcoming Royal wedding of Elizabeth and Philip, post-war rationing prompts them to illegally raise a pig for the event. But social climber Joyce (Lancashire) and her down-trodden husband Gilbert (Shearsmith) plot a scheme of their own that throws the village into chaos.
The show’s opening will coincide with the forthcoming April marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
Other casting includes Adrian Scarborough (After the Dance, Gavin & Stacey) as Wormold, David Bamber (My Night With Reg) as Swaby, Ann Emery (Billy Elliot) as Mother Dear, Jack Edwards as Allardyce and Mark Meadows as Lockwood.
The story is set in a small Yorkshire village just after the Second World War. When the locals want to celebrate the forthcoming Royal wedding, post-war rationing prompts them to illegally raise a pig for the event. But social climber Joyce (Lancashire) and her down-trodden husband Gilbert (Shearsmith) plot a scheme of their own that throws the village into chaos.
The show’s musical director is Richard Beadle, with musical staging by Stephen Mear, design by Tim Hatley, lighting by Neil Austin, sound by Mick Potter, musical supervision by Stephen Brooker and orchestrations by William David Brohn.
Ahead of Betty Blue Eyes, director Richard Eyre will direct Tom Hollander in a new production of Feydeau’s farce A Flea in her Ear at the Old Vic Theatre from 4 December.
Onassis is currently playing at the Novello Theatre starring Robert Lindsay, and is currently booking until 8 January 2011.
Read an interview with George Stiles and Anthony Drewe
Book tickets to Betty Blue Eyes at the Novello Theatre in London
TOM HOLLANDER in A Flea in her Ear
December 1, 2010
Star of Rev returns to theatre in Feydeau’s farce A Flea in her Ear
Tom Hollander is back on the London stage this Christmas in a revival of Georges Feydeau’s 1907 French farce A Flea in her Ear, directed by Richard Eyre in a version by John Mortimer.
The film, TV and stage actor’s profile is at an all-time high at the moment, with his recent starring role in BBC comedy Rev garnering much critical and audience acclaim.
Hollander’s stage roles include The Way of the World at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre in 1992 for which he won an Ian Charleson Award, The Government Inspector and Joe Penhall’s play Landscape with Weapon at the Royal National Theatre.
TV work includes new BBC comedy Rev, playing the Reverend Adam Smallbone, King George III in the HBO mini-series John Adams, The Thick Of It, Desperate Romantics, Absolutely Fabulous, Wives and Daughters, Freezing and The Lost Prince.
His movie roles include The Pirates of the Caribbean, Valkyrie, The Soloist, In the Loop, Gosford Park, Bedrooms and Hallways and Pride and Prejudice, for which he won The Evening Standard Film Awards Comedy Award, and London Critics Circle Best Supporting Actor.
This adaptation of A Flea in her Ear by John Mortimer is returning home to the Old Vic, where it was originally performed by the National Theatre in 1966 starring Albert Finney. It was later revived in 1989 starring Jim Broadbent.
Tom Hollander will co-star in the show alongside an impressive cast including Lisa Dillon – star of recent Old Vic play Design for Living, Jonathan Cake, Di Botcher, Oliver Cotton, Freddie Fox, Fiona Glascott, Lloyd Hutchinson, Tim McMullan, John Marquez, William Maxwell, Rebecca Night, Maggie Service and Walter van Dyk.
Book tickets to A Flea in her Ear at the Old Vic Theatre in London
Star Interview: Stiles & Drewe, composers of Just So and Betty Blue Eyes
November 24, 2010
“George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, this is your two minute call…” Musical theatre writers Stiles & Drewe have penned music and lyrics to a number of successful shows including West End hit Mary Poppins, Honk!, Peter Pan, The Three Musketeers and The Card. On the eve of a new, 25th anniversary production of their first hit, JUST SO, they talk to Westendtheatre.com about their love of Kipling, escape from the world of teaching, and big new Cameron Mackintosh musical Betty Blue Eyes.
George Stiles and Anthony Drewe. Photo by Alastair Muir
It was JUST SO, our second musical, which had won the first ever Vivian Ellis Prize and was optioned by Cameron Mackintosh. Cameron then co-produced the show at the Watermill Theatre in May 1989, directed by Julia McKenzie and designed by Mark Thompson.
SWEENEY TODD changed our lives. It was seeing a small production of the show at The Drum in Plymouth in 1983 that inspired us to start writing together. It is the perfect blend of great music, lyrics and story. Declan Donellan’s production at the RNT in 1993, starring Julia McKenzie and Alun Armstrong, was sublime musical theatre.
Probably the Prince Edward Theatre. Not only has it been beautifully restored, but it is where MARY POPPINS resided for three years. Other happy memories there include the opening night of CHESS in 1986 as guests of Tim Rice, and attending CRAZY FOR YOU with our dear friend, the late and deeply-missed director Mike Ockrent.
Just So, at the Tabard Theatre
Having graduated at Exeter University (George in Music, Ants in Zoology) we both had places at the University’s Post Graduate School of Education. So, if we hadn’t deferred our entry and started writing, we would probably have become Music and Biology teachers respectively. The Education system has a lot to be grateful for!
We had been reading another Kipling story, Rikki Tikki Tavi, to George’s young niece and nephew and something in the playful style of Kipling’s storytelling, and his ‘sing-song’ use of language, led us to re-examine some of his other books.
Getting a musical on has always been hard – there is so much to get right, and producers don’t like to take risks. The good news is the way in which the popularity of musicals seems to go from strength to strength, and regional theatres in both the UK and USA are starting to champion new shows.
Stars of Betty Blue Eyes, Sarah Lancashire and Reece Shearsmith, with producer Cameron Mackintosh (centre)
George doesn’t like me to be in the same room when he is composing a song. He doesn’t mind me being within earshot, even in the next room! He usually starts away from the piano, reading my lyric through to find his own rhythm for it, before he approaches the piano.
Keep writing! Listen to everyone’s opinion, but don’t feel you have to agree with everything they say. Open yourself up to collaborate – putting on a musical is the ultimate example of teamwork. Don’t give up, we’ve been writing together for nearly 28 years of which it took the first 17 years before we felt we had arrived.
We were approached by the two American bookwriters, Ron Cowen and Dan Lipman, who had watched the film and thought it would make a musical. By good fortune we were recommended to them as songwriters for the project by one of their old school friends, Stephen Schwartz.
* * * *
A brand new production of George Stiles and Anthony Drewe’s musical JUST SO, adapted from Rudyard Kipling’s timeless Just So Stories and directed by Andrew Keates, runs at the Tabard Theatre in London from 1 December 2010 to 9 January 2011. Book tickets at www.tabardweb.co.uk. Their new musical BETTY BLUE EYES, based on the award-winning film A Private Function, opens at the Novello Theatre from 19 March 2011 starring Sarah Lancashire and Reece Shearsmith and directed by Richard Eyre.
LINKS
Book tickets to Betty Blue Eyes at the Novello Theatre in London
Ian Charleson Awards
July 21, 2010
We might have missed it but the publicity around the winners of this year’s Ian Charleson Awards seemed particularly muted.
Even the Sunday Times, the sponsor of the awards, gave little promotion to the nominations or winners.
This year marks 20 years since actor Ian Charleson died on 6 January 1990 of AIDS-related causes, only eight weeks after playing Hamlet in Richard Eyre’s production at the National Theatre.
He was an extremely accomplished actor, appearing in film (Chariots of Fire), TV (Oxbridge Blues) and numerous stage roles, both plays and musicals, including Guys and Dolls and Fool For Love.
The awards were established to commemorate and celebrate his life, and The Sunday Times and the National Theatre collaborate annually to present awards for outstanding performances anywhere in the UK, by actors under the age of 30 in a classical role.
Maybe the private awards lunch held annually should be webcast by the National, so everyone can celebrate the UK’s most promising actors?
Links:
Read Alan Bates’ 1990 tribute to Ian Charleson
New Old Vic season launched
July 14, 2010
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
OLIVIER AWARDS – Best Director Winners
June 16, 2010
OLIVIER AWARDS – Best Director Winners
Best Director
2012 Matthew Warchus for Matilda The Musical
2011 Howard Davies for The White Guard
2010 Rupert Goold for Enron
2009 John Tiffany for Black Watch
2008 Rupert Goold for Macbeth
2007 Dominic Cooke for The Crucible
2006 Richard Eyre for Hedda Gabler
2005 Nicholas Hytner for The History Boys
2004 Michael Grandage for Caligula
2003 Sam Mendes for Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya
2002 Michael Boyd for Henry VI Parts I, II and III and Richard III
2001 Howard Davies for All My Sons
2000 Trevor Nunn for Summerfolk, The Merchant Of Venice and Troilus And Cressida
1999 Howard Davies for The Iceman Cometh
1998 Richard Eyre for King Lear
1997 Des McAnuff for Tommy
1996 Sam Mendes for Company and The Glass Menagerie
1989/90 Michael Bogdanov for The Wars Of The Roses
1988 Deborah Warner for Titus Andronicus
1987 Declan Donnellan for The Cid, Twelfth Night and Macbeth
1986 Bill Alexander for The Merry Wives Of Windsor
1985 Bill Bryden for The Mysteries
1984 Christopher Morahan for Wild Honey
1983 Terry Hands for Cyrano De Bergerac
1982 Richard Eyre for Guys And Dolls
1981 Peter Wood for On the Razzle
1980 Trevor Nunn and John Caird for Nicholas Nickleby
1979 Michael Bogdanov for The Taming Of The Shrew
1978 Terry Hands for Henry VI
1977 Clifford Williams for Wild Oats
1976 Jonathan Miller for The Three Sisters
Best Director of a Play
1995 Declan Donnellan for As You Like It
1994 Stephen Daldry for Machinal
1993 Stephen Daldry for An Inspector Calls
1992 Deborah Warner for Hedda Gabler
1991 David Thacker for Pericles
Best Director of a Musical
1995 Scott Ellis for She Loves Me
1994 Declan Donnellan for Sweeney Todd
1993 Nicholas Hytner for Carousel
1992 Simon Callow for Carmen Jones
1991 Richard Jones for Into The Woods
OLIVIER AWARDS – Best Play Winners
June 15, 2010
OLIVIER AWARDS – Best Play Winners
Best New Play
2012 Collaborators by John Hodge
2011 Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris
2010 The Mountaintop
2009 Black Watch by Gregory Burke
2008 A Disappearing Number
2007 Blackbird by David Harrower
2006 On The Shore Of The Wide World by Simon Stephens
2005 The History Boys by Alan Bennett
2004 The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh
The BBC Award for Best New Play
2003 Vincent In Brixton by Nicholas Wright
2002 Jitney by August Wilson
2001 Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall
2000 Goodnight Children Everywhere by Richard Nelson
1999 The Weir by Conor McPherson
1998 Closer by Patrick Marber
1997 Stanley by Pam Gems
1996 Skylight by David Hare
1995 Broken Glass by Arthur Miller
1994 Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
1993 Six Degrees Of Separation by John Guare
1992 Death And The Maiden by Ariel Dorfman
1991 Dancing At Lughnasa by Brian Friel
1989/90 Racing Demon by David Hare
1988 Our Country’s Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker
1987 Serious Money by Caryl Churchill
1986 Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Christopher Hampton
1985 Red Noses by Peter Barnes
1984 Benefactors by Michael Frayn
1983 Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
1982 Another Country by Julian Mitchell
1981 Children Of A Lesser God by Mark Medoff
1980 The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens, adapted by David Edgar
1979 Betrayal by Harold Pinter
1978 Whose Life Is It Anyway? by Brian Clark
1977 The Fire That Consumes by Henry de Montherlant, English version by Vivian Cox with Bernard Miles
1976 Dear Daddy by Denis Cannan
Best Revival
2012 Anna Christie by Eugene O’Neill
2011 After the Dance directed by Terence Rattigan
2010 Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
2009 The Histories
2007 The Crucible by Arthur Miller
2006 Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen in a new version by Richard Eyre
2005 Hamlet by William Shakespeare
2004 Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O’Neill
2003 Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare and Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekov
1995 As You Like It by William Shakespeare
1994 Machinal by Sophie Treadwell
1993 An Inspector Calls by J.B. Priestley
1992 Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
1991 Pericles by William Shakespeare
OLIVIER AWARDS – Special and Outstanding Achievement Award Winners
June 3, 2010
OLIVIER AWARDS – Special and Outstanding Achievement Award Winners
The Society’s Special Award
2012 Monica Mason and Tim Rice
2011 Stephen Sondheim
2010 Maggie Smith
2009 Sir Alan Ayckbourn
2008 Andrew Lloyd Webber
2007 John Tomlinson
2006 Sir Ian McKellen
2005 Alan Bennett
2004 Dame Judi Dench
2003 Sam Mendes
2002 Rupert Rhymes
1999 Sir Peter Hall
1998 Ed and David Mirvish
1997 Margaret Harris
1996 Harold Pinter
1994 Sam Wanamaker
1993 Sir Kenneth MacMillan
1992 Dame Ninette de Valois
1991 Dame Peggy Ashcroft
1988 Sir Alec Guinness
1985 Sir John Gielgud
1984 Lord Goodman
1983 Joan Littlewood
1982 Charles Wintour
1980 Sir Ralph Richardson
1979 Lord Olivier
Outstanding Achievement
2010 Michael Codron
2003 Gregory Doran and the Jacobean Season acting ensemble
2002 Trevor Nunn
2000 Peter O’Toole
1997 Sir Richard Eyre
The Observer Award for Outstanding Achievement (In Memory of Kenneth Tynan)
1993 The Almeida, Islington for The Rules of the Game, Medea, No Man’s Land and The Deep Blue Sea
1992 The Gate Theatre, Notting Hill for A Season of Classics from The Spanish Golden Age
1991 Cameron Mackintosh
1989/90 Declan Donnellan for Fuente Ovejuna
1988 Maly Theatre of Leningrad for Stars in the Morning Sky
1987 Thelma Holt for producing the International Festival at the National Theatre
1986 The Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith for The House of Bernarda Alba
1985 Anthony Hopkins for Pravda
The Times Award
1994 Peter Brook
Private Lives – Vaudeville Theatre – Reviews Round-up
March 4, 2010
Round up of reviews of PRIVATE LIVES starring Kim Cattrall at the Vaudeville Theatre in London
STAR RATINGS
Evening Standard 
The Telegraph
The Guardian
The Independent
Daily Mail
IN A NUTSHELL
GU: A classy revival, expertly staged by Richard Eyre… but, while it will give pleasure, the partnership of Kim Cattrall and Matthew Macfadyen as Amanda and Elyot never struck me as hatched in some ante-room of heaven.
TE: Richard Eyre’s terrific new production
TI: Thanks to him [Eyre] and his lead actors you can’t miss the play’s unassuming point and purpose.
ES: Noël Coward’s comedy calls for a mixture of turbulence and dry urbanity, and Richard Eyre’s finely calibrated production of Private Lives exhibits just the right blend of these qualities.
IN: Kim Cattrall and Matthew Macfadyen display an onstage chemistry that works like a volatile charm in Richard Eyre’s exhilaratingly funny revival of the Noel Coward comedy classic.
VA: The delights of flippancy are only intermittently on offer in Richard Eyre’s effortful revival. It’s not just the headline casting of Kim Cattrall as Amanda that overbalances this production.
DM: This is a gorgeous, glorious production of Private Lives, just bitchy enough to be modern, yet old-fashioned enough to have a three-part form.
ON KIM CATTRALL
IN: Right from the moment when Cattrall first appears on the hotel balcony clad only in a snowy white beach towel. With her tossed blonde curls and barbed flightiness, she’s a delight. …she’s got very good comic timing and demonstrates a winning flair for emotional slapstick.
GU: Cattrall, most famed for Sex and the City, is actually very good as Amanda… she brings out the inviolable selfhood that, for Coward, was a vital part of sexual attraction.
TE: Cattral is a vision to behold, at ease in her body, and miraculously combining vulnerability with sharp wit.
TI: At first I thought… [Cattrall] too free with the sort of fluttery vowels Marilyn Monroe might have have emitted were she attempting an English accent, [but] she combines allure with the mulishness of a woman who knows her own mind as well as her own body.
ES: Cattrall conveys an arch playfulness and a good deal of flighty yet vulnerable glamour. There’s warmth, too, albeit perhaps not quite enough of it.
VA: Cattrall is as elegant and feline as could be hoped for… But it requires too much effort for Cattrall to iron out her North American inflections and accent, making her voice — and thus her performance — high-pitched and, on occasion, forced.
DM: Actress Kim Cattrall almost completely sheds her identity as ‘that vamp from TV’s Sex And The City’… she produces a not quite faultless English accent. A few words such as ‘one’, ‘afterwards’, ‘going’ and ‘worry’ require attention, but as Elyot says in one of the play’s many memorable lines, ‘don’t quibble, Sibyl’.
ON MATTHEW MACFAYDEN
IN: Macfadyen is all the funnier for being so meatily masculine and solid a presence, with an accent that seems to mock its own port-wine plumminess in a manner that reminded me, at times, of Michael Gambon.
GU: There is a sanity about Macfadyen which doesn’t quite square with Elyot’s espousal of flippancy as a way of life.
TE: Matthew Macfadyen has more than a touch of the brutish bully about him.
TI: At first I thought him too aloof, even a bit sullen and stolid… But his wit has bite
ES: In the key roles, Kim Cattrall and Matthew Macfadyen have what might blithely be termed chemistry — though in fact it’s closer to particle physics, all energetic collisions and strong nuclear force.
DM: Mr Macfadyen resists any temptation to speak in a classic clipped Cowardese. He makes sense of the lines by using the sort of pouty tone of entitlement too often heard from today’s gilded 30-somethings.
VA: Macfadyen is an unusually weighty Elyot. But his unexpectedly baleful quality initially slows down the play’s pulse. He too warms up as the play progresses, but his rhythm only rarely seems in synch with Cattrall’s.
IN SUMMARY
IN: Eyre’s splendid production alerts you anew to the fact that Private Lives is a dazzling feat of airborne comic dramaturgy.
GU: It is a clever, funny production that certainly hits the spot. Only the nagging perfectionist in me makes me feel there is even more to Amanda and Elyot… they never quite acquire the halo of specialness that for Coward was the justification for living.
TE: This production never quite attains the bruising passion that Lindsay Duncan and Alan Rickman brought to the play a few years ago, but it comes close.
ES: Although it begins on an unexpectedly passive note, this is a satisfying and intelligently conceived production. It’s fluent, very funny and at times dazzlingly well-acted.
VA: The play only truly comes to life in the scenes of physical comedy… Cattrall’s presence may pull crowds, but compared with past couplings as blissful as Abigail Thaw and Simon Robson, or Lindsay Duncan and Alan Rickman, these two are simply working too hard.
KEY TO REVIEWS:
ES: Evening Standard – Henry Hitchings
TI: The Times – Benedict Nightingale
TE: The Telegraph – Charles Spencer
GU: The Guardian – Michael Billington
IN: The Independent – Paul Taylor
DM: Daily Mail – Quentin Letts
Book tickets to see Private Lives at the Vaudeville Theatre in London
Private Lives starring Kim Cattrall
December 12, 2009
Offer valid until 11th March
Noel Coward’s dazzling comic masterpiece returns to the West End in a brand new production starring Kim Cattrall (Sex and the City) and Matthew Macfadyen. Richard Eyre is to direct the new production at the Vaudeville Theatre in London
Coward’s comedy of manners finds Cattrall and Macfadyen playing former spouses who have been divorced from each other for five years. When fate finds them both honeymooning in the South of France in adjoining hotel rooms, their insatiable emotions are rekindled and they dive headlong into love and lust without a care for scandal, new partners or memories of why their marriage failed in the first place.
Cattrall, who famously plays Samantha in hit US show Sex And The City, last appeared on the London stage in 2006 when she starred in The Cryptogram at the Donmar Warehouse. She will also star in upcoming Roman Polanski thriller The Ghost.
Matthew Macfadyen played Mr Darcy in the 2005 film adaptation of Pride And Prejudice, opposite Keira Knightley, and other credits include hit spy drama Spooks, Little Dorrit and the upcoming Ridley Scott-directed film Robin Hood, in which he plays the Sheriff of Nottingham.
The play also stars Simon Paisley Day as Victor, who appeared in Entertaining Mr Sloane at Trafalgar Studios in January this year and previously in Timon Of Athens at Shakespeare’s Globe and The 39 Steps at the Criterion theatre. And Lisa Dillon as Sybil, who was most recently seen at the Almeida theatre in When The Rain Stops Falling, while her previous West End credits include Under The Blue Sky and The Master Builder. TV credits include BBC drama Cranford, Bright Young Things and Cambridge Spies.
Offer valid until 11th March
