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After 2010's thin pickings for big musicals in the West End, there's already plenty to look forward to in 2011.
photo courtesy BBC |
Two more film classics will also make their way to the musical stage: Betty Blue Eyes, a stage version of the British film comedy "A Private Function," opens at the Novello (from March 19), starring Sarah Lancashire and Reece Shearsmith, set during a Royal Wedding — no, not William and Kate (who will marry the following month), but that of William's grandparents Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip.
Also from Broadway, Million Dollar Quartet, a concert recreation of a legendary true-life recording session of four music legends Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley, comes to the Coward (from Feb. 8, opens Feb. 28), and Broadway may yet send us another pop compilation in Rock of Ages.
At the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, this year's annual summer musical will be a new production of the Gershwin tuner Crazy for You (from July 28, opens Aug. 8).
Another musical being tested out-of-town is a new stage version of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (running at Leicester's Curve, Feb. 11 to 26), directed and adapted by Kneehigh Theatre's Emma Rice (Brief Encounter on Broadway), with a West End venue still to be announced. Based on the film by Jacques Demy, it has music by Michel Legrand and an English translation by Sheldon Harnick.
The Royal Court led the way with the best plays of last year, and kicks off this year by transferring one of them, Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park, which originally premiered at Playwrights Horizons, to the West End's Wyndham's (from Jan. 28, opens Feb. 8). Meanwhile at its home theatre in Sloane Square, it launches the new season with the premiere of Richard Bean's The Heretic (previews Feb. 4, opens Feb. 10), starring Juliet Stevenson as a University academic at odds with the orthodoxy over man-made climate change. It will be followed by the premiere of Simon Stephens' Wastwater (from March 31, opens April 5), revolving around three different couples set on the edges of Heathrow Airport.
Nina Raine, who wrote Tribes (another of the Royal Court's best plays of last year), will see her next play Tiger Country premiered at Hampstead Theatre (from Jan. 13, opens Jan. 19), as part of a season that will also include the London transfer of Enda Walsh's new play Penelope first seen at Edinburgh last summer and subsequently at St Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn (from Feb. 10, opens Feb. 16), and a revival of Mike Leigh's Ecstasy, directed by the author (from March 10, opens March 15).
At the Donmar, Michael Grandage will sign off as artistic director by staging Schiller's Luise Miller (from June 8, opens June 13), with a cast that includes Felicity Jones. Before that, Bijan Sheibani will direct David Bradley in a new production of Pinter's Moonlight (from April 7, opens April 12).
photo by Joan Marcus |
The Barbican's bite11 season will include the return of Toneelgroep Amsterdam, presenting Ivo van Hove's production of Antonioni Project (Feb. 1-5), adapted from Italian film director Michaelangelo Antonioni's 1960s film trilogy that will be brought to the stage in a version that is simultaneously performed, filmed and projected onto a giant screen. Robert Lepage (whose Cirque du Soleil production of Totem comes to London's Royal Albert Hall from Jan. 5 to Feb. 17) will return to the Barbican in The Blue Dragon, which he directs and also appears in (Feb. 17-26). From Australia, Belvoir and Black Swan Theatre Company bring The Sapphires to the venue (March 2-12), and Peter Brook brings his Bouffes de Nord production of Mozart's The Magic Flute there from Paris (March 23-27). Further ahead, Deborah Warner directs Sheridan's The School for Scandal (May 11-June 18), and Olivier Award-winning company Duckie present Lullaby (June 24-July 24), which will have audiences having a sleep-over in the Pit.
The current RSC season at the Roundhouse will continue with Lucy Bailey's production of Julius Caesar (from Jan. 6, opens Jan. 10), Michael Boyd's staging of As You Like It (from Jan. 13, opens Jan. 17) and David Farr's production of King Lear starring Greg Hicks in the title role (from Jan. 21, opens Jan. 25). At Shakespeare's Globe, the 2011 season, running from April to October, will include new productions of All's Well That Ends Well and Much Ado About Nothing, as well as Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, the return of Howard Brenton's Anne Boleyn and the premiere of Chris Hannan's The God of Soho. At the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, the only Shakespeare this year is Pericles re-imagined for audiences aged six and over; the 2011 season otherwise comprises a new stage version of The Lord of the Flies (from May 19, opens May 25), John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (from June 23, opens June 28) and the aforementioned musical Crazy for You.
photo by Aubrey Reuben |
The latter will be preceded at the Apollo by a short run of Leslie Jordan's autobiographical one-man show My Trip Down the Pink Carpet (from Jan. 27, opens Feb. 3), seen Off-Broadway in 2010. Also in the West End, Keira Knightley, "Mad Men" star Elisabeth Moss, Ellen Burstyn and Carol Kane will star in Ian Rickson's production of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour at the Comedy Theatre (from Jan. 22, opens Feb. 9), and Matthew Fox (TV's "Lost") and Olivia Williams will star in the world premiere of yet another new play by the prolific Neil LaBute, In a Forest Dark and Deep, at the Vaudeville Theatre (from March 3, opens March 14).
All of these, and more news as it breaks, will be reported here on Playbill.com. Happy New Year!
(Mark Shenton is Playbill.com's London correspondent, covering breaking news from the West End and beyond.)