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These pages are changed every two or three weeks whenever possible.
Click below to go to previous News and Gossip from UP WEST
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Ad Agency Closure Throws Shows into Spin???
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11th March 2004
The name won’t mean much to theatregoers, but the sudden closure yesterday of M+H Communications has shocked those in the profession. One of the West End’s three largest marketing and advertising agencies, M+H handled hit shows including Mamma Mia!, The Woman in Black, Stomp, The Rat Pack and When Harry Met Sally as well as venues Sadler’s Wells and the Lyric Hammersmith. Yesterday, adverts were being pulled from several newspapers following rumours that the company owed millions. An email sent to Whatsonstage.com from a former agency employee attempting to provide continuity for various client campaigns confirmed that M+H had gone into voluntary insolvency and is no longer trading, but explained that “work will still continue for our clients with other agencies and through freelancers.”
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Luft Brings Garland’s Songs to London???
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9th March 2004
Lorna Luft, daughter of the late screen and singing legend Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli's half-sister, is looking to bring her one-woman show to the West End this year. The autobiographical piece and homage to her mother, title Songs My Mother Taught Me, was first seen in Los Angeles in 2003 and has proved a hit on the road in the US. Speaking on Somebody’s Daughter, Somebody’s Son, a BBC1 documentary aired last month, Luft explained that, though the show was a homage to Garland, she was not trying to be her. “I’m not ever going to be her,” said Luft. “What I’m doing is just celebrating her music because it’s the legacy that she left to me, and to all of us.”
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Springer Scours Country for White Trash???
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8th March 2004
Jerry Springer - The Opera is holding open auditions around the country this week to find new talent to join the West End production from this summer. Open auditions were also held for the premiere of the multi award-winning musical at the National Theatre last year, the first NT production to ever be cast in that way (See The Goss, 9 Dec 2002). Show producers at Avalon say no West End experience is required – however, patience is. Hopefuls are advised to arrive early each day as only the first 250 can be guaranteed to be seen. After today’s audition at the West End’s Cambridge Theatre, home of Jerry Springer, auditions continue Wednesday at Manchester’s Dancehouse, Thursday at Glasgow’s Tron Theatre and Friday at Birmingham’s Hippodrome, all started at 10.00am.
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Sold Out Notes Set to Announce Next Date???
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4th March 2004
This Sunday’s performance of Notes from New York at the Donmar Warehouse has already sold out (See News, 9 Jan 2004), but don’t despair too much if you’ve missed it. We hear that producers will shortly be announcing details of the new show in the increasingly popular series of US musical theatre showcases. This Sunday’s show features the work of Tony Award winners William Finn and Jason Robert Brown as well as Rent’s late Pulitzer Prize winner Jonathan Larson, not least the UK premieres of several songs from Larson’s only other musical Tick Tick Boom. Apparently, the next show, which is likely to return to the Arts Theatre, will feature more UK firsts for songs from a current Broadway sell-out. For those attending the Donmar this weekend, be sure to check out the outfits being sported by stars Debbie Kurup, Paul Spicer, Julie Atherton and Craig Purnell. In another first for the series, the performers are being wardrobed by brand name fashion house DKNY (Donna Karan New York). Nice.
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Joyce Family Opposes Calico Premiere???
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3rd March 2004
Calico, Michael Hastings’ new play about the secret 1920s romance between James Joyce’s daughter Lucia and a young Samuel Beckett, receives its world premiere tonight despite opposition from the Joyce family (See News, 1 Mar 2004). Over the years, the novelist’s grandson Stephen Joyce has proved highly protective of the novelist’s work and details of the family’s private life. In 1993, two years after the 50th anniversary of Joyce’s death, when the copyright on his work lapsed, Stephen Joyce had it restored by EU directive. He’s taken legal action on multiple occasions over the use of Joyce’s work and hindered the writing of an upcoming biography by an American academic. Hastings was inspired in part to write Calico by what he viewed as the Joyce family’s determination to “vaporise” memory of Lucia, who was mentally unstable. At a scholars’ symposium in 1988, Stephen Joyce revealed that he’d burned all of his correspondence with Lucia in order to ensure that no future biographers could use it.
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RSC's Boyd Unveils £1m Hamlet???
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1st March 2004
Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Michael Boyd will visit Christie’s in London this morning (1 March 2004) to unveil an exceptionally rare third quarto edition of Hamlet (1611), the earliest copy of the bard’s text remaining in private hands. The edition will be auctioned at Christie’s in New York on 14 April, when it’s expected to fetch in the region of $1,500,000-2,000,000. Back in the UK, Boyd’s own staging of Hamlet, starring Toby Stephens in the title role, opens at Stratford on 20 July 2004 (See News, 18 Feb 2004). The production at last marks Boyd’s directorial debut as artistic director, more than a year after he assumed the post from Adrian Noble in April 2003.
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Tear Down West End Playhouses???
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27th February 2004
Andrew Lloyd Webber has suggested that some of the West End’s 40 listed theatres should be demolished. Speaking yesterday in a House of Lords debate about the recent Theatres Trust report, which estimated that a minimum of £250 million would need to be invested in West End restorations, Lloyd Webber asked: “Would it not be better if we did not stay on the heritage side here and said, for once, we will actually allow a new development? Let’s keep the best buildings but think about the future of the playhouses.” As an example, he singled out Shaftesbury Avenue’s Apollo, one of more than a dozen West End venues owned or managed by his own Really Useful company. Despite a beautiful interior, “you can see practically nothing from most places” in the Apollo, said Lloyd Webber. |
BBC Roots Out Daldry Fax after Oliviers???
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26th February 2004
We’re pleased to note that many theatregoers – including several on the Whatsonstage.com Discussion Forum - have risen to the challenge set by director Stephen Daldry at the Laurence Olivier Awards to write to BBC2 controller Jane Root about not televising this year’s ceremony for the first time in the awards history (See News, 23 Feb 2004). In response to their complaints, the BBC has been forwarding copies of the fax sent by Root to Daldry after reading his comments in the press. We’re not quite sure what to make of Root’s reasoning – that viewers want information on things on that week in the arts rather than “traditional year-in-review” programming (is it an either/or?) – but we’re fairly sure Daldry won’t be pleased to discover his own fax number features prominently at the top of all of these missives to members of the public. Is its inclusion a sign of incompetence or revenge? Either way, we imagine someone may soon be changing their fax.
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1980s Still Hip in New Club Tropicana???
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26th February 2004
Ready to turn back the clock 20 years? If you’re a child of the 1980s, you may be keen to sign up for Club Tropicana, a new compilation musical that aims to have you waxing nostalgic. While the comedic whodunit book for Club Tropicana is still in a state of flux, the score such established retro hits as “The Look of Love”, Temptation”, “True”, “Time After Time” and the title song. After a series of workshops, producers are aiming for a London premiere this year or next.
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Mike Read Readies YMCA 1970s Musical???
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26th February 2004
And turning back the clock another decade still, Mike Read, fresh from the jungle of reality TV’s I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!, is reportedly working on YMCA, a new musical about 1970s camp boys the Village People who had a hit with the arm-waving song of the title, which he plans to write and direct for a summer premiere. Last year, Cliff - The Musical, the former DJ and television presenter’s self-penned bio-musical in which he appeared as one of four Cliff Richards, had a critically panned West End season at the Prince of Wales. At the time, Read said he was also working on two other stage projects - an adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper and a musical version of A Midsummer Night's Dream titled Oh Puck! (See The Goss, 29 Apr 2003).
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This page is re-produced with the kind permission of the website whatsonstage.com
References to "The Goss" in the text refer to the gossip pages of Whats on Stage.
If you are planning a trip to a West End theatre check out the Whats on Stage pages first.
There are always lots of concessions on offer.
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