New life for LOST PLAYS from Broadway’s Golden Age
The (RADA) Studio Theatre (formerly The Drill Hall)
16 Chenies Street, London WC1
AUNTIE MAME (1956) by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG (1934) by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart
THE SHRIKE (1952) by Joseph Kramm
The Lost Musicals Charitable Trust presents a unique season of long-lost plays by some of Broadway’s greatest writers, thanks to a new project housed at RADA. Director Ian Marshall Fisher, well known as the brains behind the long-running LOST MUSICALS project, presents LOST PLAYS, an innovative new season of three important plays from Broadway’s past that are all but unknown to London audiences.
“Ian Marshall Fisher’s semi staged performances are a spectacular celebration of rarely heard works by America’s most important writers” (Ben Brantley, New York Times)
The programme opens on 30th June with Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s Auntie Mame, not seen in London since its original West End production in 1958 with Beatrice Lillie. Rosalind Russell was Auntie Mame on Broadway and in the movie of the play, which in America is regarded as a classic. Based on Patrick Dennis’s best-selling novel about his own wildly eccentric aunt, the play was made into a hugely successful Jerry Herman musical, Mame, starring Angela Lansbury in New York and Ginger Rogers in London, and then a movie of the musical, which starred Lucille Ball. The swift, slashing comedy of the original play will be a revelation to those who know only the more leisurely musical.
Later in the year, from 8th September, Fisher will present Merrily We Roll Along (1934) by the Pulitzer Prize winners George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, a tragicomedy which uses the device of telling a story from end to beginning. Stephen Sondheim was so taken with it that he made it into a musical of the same name. Opening with a look at the corruption of a famous playwright, the play goes backward in time to show us how, with each false step, the former idealist came to value money over art and betrayed his two best friends.
Closing this first season of the project from 3rd November, Fisher will direct Joseph Kramm’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Shrike, an intimate psychological play that is also, as the New York Times critic wrote, “likely to scare the living daylights out of you.” Committed to a mental institution after he tried to commit suicide, the main character, a theatre director, quickly regains his sanity but finds that the doctors won’t believe him. They trust only his sweet but vindictive wife, who wants to keep him there. José Ferrer was the star of the Broadway play, and his co-star in the movie version was an actress provocatively cast against type, June Allyson. The movie could not be made without compromises (a pretty girlfriend, a hopeful ending), but now the original play can be seen in all its chilling reality.
Continuing the format of LOST MUSICALS, LOST PLAYS will be presented as semi-staged performances on Sunday afternoons. The home for the project will be the Studio Theatre (formerly the Drill Hall) in Chenies Street, London WC1, between June and November 2019.
The casts will include actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre. Before each performance a celebrity guest speaker will give a brief talk on the piece.
Ian Marshall Fisher commented: “After thirty years of dusting off the neglected musicals of some of the finest writers in Broadway history, I felt the time was right to explore a new dimension. This season of three contrasting plays sheds new light on the innovation, daring and artistry of several of the leading figures from the greatest period in American theatrical history.”
Ian Marshall Fisher is an expert on the Golden Age of the American theatre, 1930-1960. He works in the USA liaising with the estates of Broadway’s major theatre writers and has directed the first revivals of musicals by leading writers including Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Kaufman and Hart, Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner. These productions have played to sold-out audiences for nearly thirty years, with previous homes of the project including some of London’s leading arts venues (the Barbican, Royal Opera House and Sadler’s Wells). Among the actors taking part have been James Corden, Sara Kestelman, Daniel Massey, Louise Gold, Janie Dee, Andrew Lincoln, Anne Reid, Barry Cryer and Henry Goodman. A recognised authority on the American theatre, Fisher has lectured internationally on the topic, including at Princeton University.
He has presented revivals of over 75 neglected musicals from Broadway’s Golden Age (1930-60) under the umbrella of the LOST MUSICALS project since 1989. LOST PLAYS is a new venture that builds on that work by giving London audiences a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see some of the non-musical plays that were written and performed by many of the same creative figures.
‘LOST PLAYS’ LISTINGS INFORMATON:
Production: AUNTIE MAME (1956) by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
Dates: Sunday 30th June; 7th & 14th July at 3:30 pm
Production: MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG (1934) by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart
Dates: Sunday 8th, 15th & 22nd September at 3:30 pm
Production: THE SHRIKE (1952) by Joseph Kramm
Dates: Sunday 3rd, 10th & 17th November at 3:30pm
Venue: The (RADA) Studio Theatre (formerly The Drill Hall), 16 Chenies Street, London WC1
Tickets: £29.50 Box office: 020 7908 4800/ https://www.rada.ac.uk/lost-plays-presented-lost-musicals/