Issue #155: July 15, 2005

• Brooke Shields will be taking over the Roxie Hart role in the long-running revival of Chicago on September 9.  In the meantime she's currently performing the role in London so she'll be ready to strut the boards in New York.  Shields is no stranger to the stage; she's appeared in productions of Cabaret, Grease and last year in Wonderful Town.

• A five-week workshop is currently underway in New York for the Broadway bound Tale of Two Cities.  With a tentative opening on April 27 the new musical will have a pre-Broadway run at the Chicago Theatre beginning January 31.  The workshop has numerous actors who have cut their teeth on Broadway in Les Miserables and Miss Saigon.  No New York theatre has been mentioned to date.

• What Tony award-winning producers are interested in the Stratford, Ontario production of As You Like It featuring the music of Canadian pop band The Bare Naked Ladies?

• The less than stellar reviews for The Mambo Kings in San Francisco has the producers shaking up the creative input by talking to heavy hitters director-choreographer Jerry Mitchell, book writer David Ives and lyricist-composer Jason Robert Brown to come to the rescue.

• It was business as usual one day after the terrorist bombings in London. the 40 commercial theatres were closed on July 7 on advice from police.  Not since World War II has there been an enforced closure of the theatre district.  But as all Britons showed the world, they headed back to business and to life as normal as can be the day following the attack.  Bravo!!!

• An eerie bit of "art imitating life" took place when a new play Talking to Terrorists opened at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square just days before the bombings.  Director Max Stafford-Clark and writer Robin Soans spent a year interviewing terrorists, politicians, journalists and relief workers around the world as the basis for this timely play.  It opened to terrific reviews, with Michael Billington of The Guardian stating it is "the most important new play we have seen this year." 

• Joseph Fiennes will star in the West End revival of Epitaph for George Dillon.  The production opens at the Comedy Theatre September 27.

• Not burned by scathing reviews of the movie version of The Phantom of the Opera, Lord Lloyd Webber is looking to have a film adaptation of his musical Sunset Boulevard on screen just in time for Christmas 2006.  Signed on to star are Glenn Close and Ewan McGregor.