TO MAKE WEST END THEATRE DEBUT AS MISS HANNIGAN IN
OPENING AT THE PICCADILLY THEATRE MAY 2017
CHILDREN’S TICKETS HALF PRICE MONDAY TO THURSDAY
Multi award-winning comedy writer, actor and author Miranda Hart, will make her West End Theatre debut as Miss Hannigan in Annie opening in the West End in May 2017. Previews at the Piccadilly Theatre will begin on 23 May 2017 with opening night on 5 June 2017. The production, directed by Nikolai Foster, will be produced by Michael Harrison and David Ian.Further casting will be announced shortly.
Miranda Hart said:
“Miss Hannigan is a dream role, and certainly has been for me, but I never thought it would be a reality. But here we are and I have a newly found musical theatre-esque spring in my step! I hope people will leave the theatre feeling life is a little better and dreamier and jollier after watching it, as much as we feel that performing it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some leg-warmers to put on…”
Public booking for Annie opens on Monday 27 February 2017 at 10am with the production initially booking to 6 January 2018. Children’s tickets will be half price for Monday to Thursday performances (see listings information below).
Set in 1930s New York during The Great Depression, brave young Annie is forced to live a life of misery and torment at Miss Hannigan’s orphanage. Her luck changes when she is chosen to spend Christmas at the residence of famous billionaire, Oliver Warbucks. Meanwhile, spiteful Miss Hannigan has other ideas and hatches a plan to spoil Annie’s search for her true family…
Annie has book by Thomas Meehan adapted from the comic strip Little Orphan Annie, music by Charles Strouse and lyrics by Martin Charnin. The West End production will have sets and costumes designed by Colin Richmond, choreography by Nick Winston, lighting by Ben Cracknell, sound design by Richard Brooker and orchestration and musical direction by George Dyer.
Foster’s production arrives in the West End 40 years after the original Broadway production opened in 1977 and received seven Tony awards including the Best Musical, Best Score and Best Book. The last West End production of Annie opened at the Victoria Palace Theatre in 1998. In 1982, Annie was adapted for the big screen directed by John Huston with a cast including Carol Burnett, Bernadette Peters and Albert Finney and in 2014 a further feature film was released, directed by Will Gluck, with a cast including Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx. The much-loved score includes the classics It’s A Hard Knock Life, Tomorrow and Easy Street.
Miranda Hart is best known on television for her hugely successful, semi-auto-biographical and multi award-wining BBC sitcom Miranda which ran from 2009 for 3 series and 2 specials. She was the recipient of a BAFTA nomination, an NTA Award and two TV Choice Awards for her performance as Chummy in the BBC television drama Call the Midwife. In 2014 she completed her first sell out stand-up arena tour My, What I Call, Live Show culminating in five shows at London’s 02 Arena. As a best-selling author her first book Is It Just Me? was the biggest selling non-fiction hardback of 2013 winning Non-Fiction Book of the Year at The National Book Awards. She followed this in 2014 with The Best of Miranda and last year released her third book Peggy and Me. Her theatre credits include Cruising for The Bush Theatre, Come Out Eli for Battersea Arts Centre, All About Me for Soho Theatre as well as multiple appearances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Her film credits include Spy, The Infidel, Magicians as well as upcoming The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018).
Nikolai Foster is Artistic Director at Curve. Since taking up his post in 2015, he has directed Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey’s Grease, Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Spring Awakening, Legally Blonde, Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s (also Theatre Royal Haymarket and on tour nationally), Roald Dahl’s The Witches, adapted by David Wood, Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, Shakespeare’s Richard III, Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing and Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good, a performance to celebrate the reveal of the tomb of King Richard III at Leicester Cathedral. Foster has also served as an Associate Director at West Yorkshire Playhouse Leeds as trained at Drama Centre London and at the Crucible, Sheffield, supported by the Regional Theatre Young Director scheme.
Photography by Matt Crockett
To keep up to date with the latest news on Annie and many other shows, please follow thespyinthestalls on Twitter by clicking the image below.
Listing
Annie
23 May 2017 to 6 January 2018
Tuesday 23 May at 7.30pm, Wednesday 24 May at 7.30pm, Thursday 25 May at 7.30pm, Friday 26 May at 7.30pm, Saturday 27 May at 3pm and 7.30pm.
Then Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 7.30pm, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays at 3pm
NB – Miranda Hart will be performing the role of Miss Hannigan until 17 September 2017
Piccadilly Theatre
16 Denman St, Soho, London W1D 7DY
Box Office
Tickets from £20
which include a restoration levy of £1.75
No booking or transaction fees through official sales outlets
Children Go Half-Price (Monday to Thursday performances, top price only, subject to a maximum of 2 children aged 16 or under with each full paying adult, and subject to availability)
Jonathan Church, Oliver Mackwood & Oxford Playhouse present
EDWARD FOX RETURNS TO THE WEST END IN SAND IN THE SANDWICHES, A PLAY CELEBRATING THE LIFE AND WORK OF FORMER POET LAUREATE, JOHN BETJEMAN WRITTEN BY HUGH WHITEMORE, THE PRODUCTION WILL PLAY MAY 30th – JUNE 3rd AT THEATRE ROYAL HAYMARKET BEFORE CONTINUING ON A UK TOUR TICKETS ARE NOW ON SALE VIA
Fresh from a sell-out 2016 UK Tour, Edward Fox is to return to the West End in the celebrated one-man play exploring the life and work of John Betjeman, Sand in the Sandwiches, for a strictly limited London run. A journey through memory and verse, the play collates the work of the twentieth century’s most treasured poet. Written by Hugh Whitemore and directed by Gareth Armstrong, it will visit Northampton before its London premiere at Theatre Royal Haymarket between May 30th and June 3rd 2017, followed by an extended UK tour visiting Cambridge, Malvern, Woking, Brighton and Bath.
Edward Fox said
“It is lovely to be returning to one of the great theatres of the world and to the role of John Betjeman, even now at the age of 80. All of us involved are working to magnify the voice of one of the greatest minds in England. Betjeman once said that ‘poetry is life’, and I agree. You can’t live without it.”
John Betjeman was the nation’s favourite poet. Sand in the Sandwiches celebrates a man famous not only for light verse and laughter, but for his passions, his sense of purpose and his unforgettable poetry. Through boyhood, his adolescence, to life as Britain’s Poet Laureate, Sand in the Sandwiches presents a hugely entertaining insight into the world of this much-loved irreverent writer. Triple BAFTA winner Edward Fox (OBE) stars in this new one-man play, bringing Betjeman’s poetry and vivacious personality to life.
Edward Fox’s distinguished career counts iconic British films including the Oscar winning Ghandi, The Day of the Jackal, A Bridge Too Far, Oh! What a Lovely War, The Dresser, The Go-Between, A Doll’s House, Pride and Prejudice, Robin Hood, Nicholas Nickleby, Force 10 from Navarone and James Bond’s Never Say Never Again. His stage credits include: The Audience, Four Quartets, Hamlet, An Evening with Anthony Trollope, Letter of Resignation and many more. His film credits have won him three BAFTA Awards and in 2003 he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his contribution to stage and cinema.
Hugh Whitemore, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, is an award-winning writer whose work spans stage and screen. Theatre credits include: As you Desire Me, Stevie, Pack of Lies (which won Judi Dench the Olivier Award for Best Female Actor), The Best of Friends, Breaking the Code, God Only Knows, Disposing of the Body, The Last Cigarette playing at acclaimed theatre across the UK and internationally. His films credits include: Jane Eyre (1996), 84 Charing Cross Road, Stevie, The Return of the Soldier, Bluebird, Man at the Top, and All Neat in Black Stockings. With over 70 television credits, Whitemore has written for broadcasters in both the UK and USA, winning two Writers Guild of Great Britain Awards and two Emmy Awards.
Director Gareth Armstrong specialises in solo performance and has helped to create a dozen such theatre pieces, including Hugh Whitemore’s My Darling Clemmie starring Rohan McCulloch as Winston Churchill’s wife, and his own dramatisation of Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, called Wilde Without the Boy. As an Associate Artist at Salisbury Playhouse under the Directorship of Jonathan Church, he premiered his own one-man show, Shylock. The play toured for over a decade to more than forty countries and has been translated and performed in Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Hungarian and Mandarin Chinese. Armstrong also co-founded The Made in Wales Theatre Company to premiere new plays and was Artistic Director of Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre.
Sand in the Sandwiches will play at Theatre Royal Haymarket between Tuesday May 30th and Saturday June 3rd. This week is available at the theatre due to a pre-contractual, prior engagement, which means that Damian Lewis is unavailable to perform in Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? The producers took the decision to suspend the run of The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? for that week. The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? will recommence performances on 5th June.
Sand in the Sandwiches by Hugh Whitemore is directed by Gareth Armstrong with designs by BAFTA award-winning Fotini Dimou, lighting by double Olivier award-winning Howard Harrison and sound by Olivier award & Ivor Novello award nominated composer Simon Slater. Sand in the Sandwiches is produced by Jonathan Church, Oliver Mackwood Productions and Oxford Playhouse.
WOKING New Victoria Theatre Friday 16 – Saturday 17 June Eves: 7.30pm, Mats: Sat 2.30pm Box Office 0844 871 7645* http://www.atgtickets.com/venues/new-victoria-theatre/ *Calls cost 7p per minute, plus your phone company’s access charge.
BRIGHTON Theatre Royal Tuesday 27 June – Saturday 1 July Eves: 7.45pm, Mats: Wed & Sat 2.30pm Box Office 0844 871 7650* www.atgtickets.com/brighton *Calls cost 7p per minute, plus your phone company’s access charge.
BATH Theatre Royal Tuesday 11 July – Saturday 15 July Eves: Tue & Wed 7.30pm / Thur, Fri & Sat 8pm, Mats: Wed & Sat 2.30pm Box Office 01225 448815 www.theatreroyal.org.uk
