What Next for the London Palladium???
Date: 18 May 2005
Now that
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has posted closing notices for September (See Today’s
News), that frees the West End’s largest venue, the 2,300-seat London Palladium, up for various big-budget musicals in search of a home. In the short term, the most likely resident is the
Tommy Steele-headed production of
Scrooge, Leslie Bricusse's musical retelling of Charles Dickens' literary classic
A Christmas Carol, which has been seen in Manchester and Birmingham over the past two festive seasons (See
The Goss, 21 Apr 2005). Further ahead in 2006, the Palladium could make a viable option for planned revivals of
The Sound of Music and
Evita or for the UK premiere of
The Lord of the Rings. The £11.5 million musical adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s trilogy originally planned to stage its world premiere this year at the West End’s Dominion but had to make alternative arrangements when it became clear that Queen’s
We Will Rock You held on to the theatre.
The Lord of the Rings will now open first in Toronto in March 2006 ahead of a planned London transfer in autumn 2006 (See
News, 15 Mar 2005).
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