Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch has firmly committed to playing Shakespeare’s ‘sweet prince’ now that a home has been found for his Hamlet.
I can reveal that the play about the troubled Dane will begin performances in August next year at London’s Barbican Theatre.
It had been hoped that Cumberbatch’s Hamlet would run this year, but we’ll have to wait — mainly because of a paucity of appropriate venues, but also thanks to the packed schedules of Cumberbatch and Hamlet’s director Lyndsey Turner.
The show will be the centrepiece of the Barbican’s 2015 season.
When approached on the matter, Hamlet producer Sonia Friedman said: ‘I can confirm that we are in final negotiations with the Barbican,’ but she declined to comment further.
However, others associated with the production told me Cumberbatch was better able to clear a big chunk of time in 2015 — he has agreed to commit to a 12-week run in the Barbican, and at least six weeks of preparation and rehearsal time.
Cumberbatch will also meet periodically with director Turner to work out how to approach the Bard’s landmark drama, which is seen as a test of an actor’s stage ability.
The 1,166-seat Barbican Theatre is big enough to house Cumberbatch’s growing fan-base, which has exploded since the success of Sherlock on BBC TV and the star’s appearances in blockbuster movies such as Star Trek: Into Darkness, August: Osage County and the Oscar-winning 12 Years A Slave.
He last appeared on stage at the National Theatre in Frankenstein, directed by Danny Boyle.
Cumberbatch has a major movie coming out in the Autumn called The Imitation Game, which is expected to figure in the next awards season.
He portrays the World War II code-breaking mastermind Alan Turing, while Keira Knightley portrays one of his Bletchley Park colleagues.
Imelda Staunton is so gifted at inhabiting the characters she plays that it was rather disconcerting to meet the real Imelda in her dressing room and not mean-spirited Margie, the Boston-Irish woman she’d been portraying on stage for more than two hours.
The award-winning actress is starring in David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer-prize winning play Good People, which focuses on Margie, a woman who had precious few choices offered to her, growing up in Boston’s tough Southside.
Good People has been playing to packed houses at the Hampstead Theatre, and it closes on April 5. Five days later, it will begin performances at the Noel Coward, in the West End, for a ten-week season.
‘That was a shock,’ the actress joked. ‘I was looking forward to putting my feet up.’
The transfer happened very quickly after The Full Monty suddenly got its notice at the Noel Coward. Handily, Good People was thinking about a move and so a deal was struck in a matter of days.
Imelda had been hoping for a little rest before going into rehearsals for the musical Gypsy, which starts previews in Chichester from October 6.
Good People ran on Broadway a couple of years ago with an American cast, but I found the production sluggish. At the Hampstead, though, under the direction of Jonathan Kent, it cracks along like a psychological thriller and is much tighter — and funnier.
Constant tardiness has cost Imelda’s Margie her job in the American equivalent of a pound store. She lives hand to mouth while trying to care for her grown-up daughter, who doesn’t leave the apartment.
Margie meets Mike, an old flame (played by Lloyd Owen), who is married and living a swanky life well away from his old, hard-knock upbringing in ‘Southie’. Mike resents Margie barging her way into his comfort zone.
‘Her tough life has made her meaner. She wasn’t always that way,’ Imelda told me. ‘Margie’s unpleasant — and I like that. I like that people don’t like her, then like her; and they don’t like Mike, then they change their minds.’
She said she can hear audiences gasping and going ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’. ‘It’s about money, race and class — and the fact that not everyone has choices,’ she said.
Once Good People is over, Imelda will have a short holiday and then start work on her role as Mama Rose for Gypsy.
Stephen Sondheim told me he has waited a long time for Imelda to do the part. ‘She will be a Rose to remember,’ he said when we met backstage in New York a couple of weeks ago.
‘Rose’s life has made her hard, too,’ Imelda noted.
But she will conquer her, just as she has Margie.
Over at the London Palladium, folks have been calling the new X Factor musical, I Can’t Sing, ‘Glyndebourne’ — because, as with the famous opera house in East Sussex, you have time to eat your dinner during the interval.
Actually, that joke’s old now. Yes, when previews started the interval was 48 minutes long. Lately, though, it’s been an average of 26 minutes, which makes the bar manager happy, because more people buy more of the awful wine at £10 a glass.
The trouble arose because Es Devlin’s set in the first act was so huge that it couldn’t be shifted in time to fit in the sets for the second act. Simple solution: chop chunks off the first set and re-engineer it to make it fit. Which is what has happened.
Audiences who do pay to see I Can’t Sing — written by comedian Harry Hill — are praising Nigel Harman, Victoria Elliott and Katy Secombe. Like me, they give some parts of the show eight out of ten. Other parts, though, get just two out of ten.
People connected to the musical are, as one executive put it, ‘obviously nervous’ because not all of the show is working, and people haven’t been rushing to buy seats. It has £1.05 million in advance sales — not perilous, but getting there.
Who knows? Maybe I Can’t Sing will be a hit with critics and will receive five-star reviews and run for 12 years, like we Will Rock You.
On the other hand, a few wags have said that other shows are already being lined up for the Palladium. However, a big chief at the Really Useful Group, which owns the Palladium, refuted that. ‘RUG is not having discussions with any other producer, nor would we.’
Nigel Havers who will play Algernon, and Martin Jarvis,who will play Jack, in a novel production of The Importance Of Being Earnest, which will start at the Harold Pinter Theatre on June 27.
Director Lucy Bailey’s production imagines a fictional Bunbury Players putting on a production of Oscar Wilde’s play as they have done, over and over, for decades. Hence the age of the players.
It’s apt, because Havers and Jarvis starred in a production Peter Hall directed at the National Theatre back in 1982, with Judi Dench as Lady Bracknell.
Sian Phillips will play Lady Bracknell this time around; Cherie Lunghi is Gwendolen, Christine Kavanagh will be Cecily, Rosalind Ayres is Miss Prism, and Niall Buggy will take the role of Reverend Chasuble.
Producer Rupert Gavin said the ensemble have ‘never been allowed to stop playing, so they’ve grown into the roles, and are very good’.
The comedy will run at the Pinter from September 20 before going on tour to Bath, Richmond, Aylesbury, Brighton and Birmingham.
Robert Lindsay, Rufus Hound, Katherine Kingsley, Samantha Bond, John Marquez and newcomer Lizzy Connolly, who are on sparkling form in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which is previewing at the Savoy Theatre. It’s directed and choreographed with pizzazz and style by Jerry Mitchell.
When I saw it in New York a few years back, it wasn’t half as funny as it is now. Students of theatre should go and see what a masterclass in how to put on a musical looks like.
I don’t even remember most of the songs, but it doesn’t matter. It’s just unexpectedly, enormously enjoyable.
The Royal Shakespeare Company’s adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, which have sold a phenomenal £4.3 million worth of tickets at the Aldwych Theatre in London — which is where the two dramas will transfer to, from Stratford from May 1, for a limited season.
There’s a chance that they might be allowed to extend for a short period, although The Bodyguard hopes to move into the Aldwych after the Mantel plays.
The Bodyguard has to get out of its present home, the Adelphi, in September.
I can reveal that the play about the troubled Dane will begin performances in August next year at London’s Barbican Theatre.
The show will be the centrepiece of the Barbican’s 2015 season.
When approached on the matter, Hamlet producer Sonia Friedman said: ‘I can confirm that we are in final negotiations with the Barbican,’ but she declined to comment further.
However, others associated with the production told me Cumberbatch was better able to clear a big chunk of time in 2015 — he has agreed to commit to a 12-week run in the Barbican, and at least six weeks of preparation and rehearsal time.
Cumberbatch will also meet periodically with director Turner to work out how to approach the Bard’s landmark drama, which is seen as a test of an actor’s stage ability.
The 1,166-seat Barbican Theatre is big enough to house Cumberbatch’s growing fan-base, which has exploded since the success of Sherlock on BBC TV and the star’s appearances in blockbuster movies such as Star Trek: Into Darkness, August: Osage County and the Oscar-winning 12 Years A Slave.
He last appeared on stage at the National Theatre in Frankenstein, directed by Danny Boyle.
Cumberbatch has a major movie coming out in the Autumn called The Imitation Game, which is expected to figure in the next awards season.
He portrays the World War II code-breaking mastermind Alan Turing, while Keira Knightley portrays one of his Bletchley Park colleagues.
No rest for Imelda’s mean queen
Imelda Staunton is so gifted at inhabiting the characters she plays that it was rather disconcerting to meet the real Imelda in her dressing room and not mean-spirited Margie, the Boston-Irish woman she’d been portraying on stage for more than two hours.
The award-winning actress is starring in David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer-prize winning play Good People, which focuses on Margie, a woman who had precious few choices offered to her, growing up in Boston’s tough Southside.
Good People has been playing to packed houses at the Hampstead Theatre, and it closes on April 5. Five days later, it will begin performances at the Noel Coward, in the West End, for a ten-week season.
‘That was a shock,’ the actress joked. ‘I was looking forward to putting my feet up.’
The transfer happened very quickly after The Full Monty suddenly got its notice at the Noel Coward. Handily, Good People was thinking about a move and so a deal was struck in a matter of days.
Imelda had been hoping for a little rest before going into rehearsals for the musical Gypsy, which starts previews in Chichester from October 6.
Good People ran on Broadway a couple of years ago with an American cast, but I found the production sluggish. At the Hampstead, though, under the direction of Jonathan Kent, it cracks along like a psychological thriller and is much tighter — and funnier.
Constant tardiness has cost Imelda’s Margie her job in the American equivalent of a pound store. She lives hand to mouth while trying to care for her grown-up daughter, who doesn’t leave the apartment.
Margie meets Mike, an old flame (played by Lloyd Owen), who is married and living a swanky life well away from his old, hard-knock upbringing in ‘Southie’. Mike resents Margie barging her way into his comfort zone.
‘Her tough life has made her meaner. She wasn’t always that way,’ Imelda told me. ‘Margie’s unpleasant — and I like that. I like that people don’t like her, then like her; and they don’t like Mike, then they change their minds.’
She said she can hear audiences gasping and going ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’. ‘It’s about money, race and class — and the fact that not everyone has choices,’ she said.
Once Good People is over, Imelda will have a short holiday and then start work on her role as Mama Rose for Gypsy.
Stephen Sondheim told me he has waited a long time for Imelda to do the part. ‘She will be a Rose to remember,’ he said when we met backstage in New York a couple of weeks ago.
‘Rose’s life has made her hard, too,’ Imelda noted.
But she will conquer her, just as she has Margie.
Actually, that joke’s old now. Yes, when previews started the interval was 48 minutes long. Lately, though, it’s been an average of 26 minutes, which makes the bar manager happy, because more people buy more of the awful wine at £10 a glass.
The trouble arose because Es Devlin’s set in the first act was so huge that it couldn’t be shifted in time to fit in the sets for the second act. Simple solution: chop chunks off the first set and re-engineer it to make it fit. Which is what has happened.
Audiences who do pay to see I Can’t Sing — written by comedian Harry Hill — are praising Nigel Harman, Victoria Elliott and Katy Secombe. Like me, they give some parts of the show eight out of ten. Other parts, though, get just two out of ten.
People connected to the musical are, as one executive put it, ‘obviously nervous’ because not all of the show is working, and people haven’t been rushing to buy seats. It has £1.05 million in advance sales — not perilous, but getting there.
Who knows? Maybe I Can’t Sing will be a hit with critics and will receive five-star reviews and run for 12 years, like we Will Rock You.
On the other hand, a few wags have said that other shows are already being lined up for the Palladium. However, a big chief at the Really Useful Group, which owns the Palladium, refuted that. ‘RUG is not having discussions with any other producer, nor would we.’
Director Lucy Bailey’s production imagines a fictional Bunbury Players putting on a production of Oscar Wilde’s play as they have done, over and over, for decades. Hence the age of the players.
It’s apt, because Havers and Jarvis starred in a production Peter Hall directed at the National Theatre back in 1982, with Judi Dench as Lady Bracknell.
Producer Rupert Gavin said the ensemble have ‘never been allowed to stop playing, so they’ve grown into the roles, and are very good’.
The comedy will run at the Pinter from September 20 before going on tour to Bath, Richmond, Aylesbury, Brighton and Birmingham.
Robert Lindsay, Rufus Hound, Katherine Kingsley, Samantha Bond, John Marquez and newcomer Lizzy Connolly, who are on sparkling form in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which is previewing at the Savoy Theatre. It’s directed and choreographed with pizzazz and style by Jerry Mitchell.
When I saw it in New York a few years back, it wasn’t half as funny as it is now. Students of theatre should go and see what a masterclass in how to put on a musical looks like.
I don’t even remember most of the songs, but it doesn’t matter. It’s just unexpectedly, enormously enjoyable.
The Royal Shakespeare Company’s adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, which have sold a phenomenal £4.3 million worth of tickets at the Aldwych Theatre in London — which is where the two dramas will transfer to, from Stratford from May 1, for a limited season.
There’s a chance that they might be allowed to extend for a short period, although The Bodyguard hopes to move into the Aldwych after the Mantel plays.
The Bodyguard has to get out of its present home, the Adelphi, in September.
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