Boy Friend Flirts with West End Transfer???

Ian Talbot’s production of Sandy Wilson’s 1920s nostalgia-fest The Boy Friend, which has won rave reviews this summer at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park, may be joining the rush of musicals into the West End (20 newly arrived or announced for 2006 at last count). It’s tipped for a transfer, possibly to the 450-seat New Ambassadors, which has been dark since last month’s premature closure of On the Third Day, the winner of Channel’s 4’s playwriting competition The Play’s the Thing (See News, 17 Jul 2006). The Boy Friend finishes its summer repertory season at Regent’s Park on 9 September 2006. If it doesn’t come into the West End immediately, it’s likely to tour ahead of a possible transfer further down the line. Talbot’s 2003 Open Air revival of Cole Porter’s High Society had two successful regional tours before last year’s three-month season at the West End’s Shaftesbury Theatre, where model-turned-actress Jerry Hall starred (albeit briefly). Wilson’s 1954 musical was first seen at the intimate Players Theatre in London and later transferred to the West End and onto Broadway where a young Julie Andrews made her American debut in the role of Polly. In 1926 at Mme Dubonnet's fashionable finishing school on the French Riviera, millionaire's daughter Polly falls in love with delivery boy Tony. To hold his interest, she pretends to be a working girl, but her efforts are complicated by her boy-crazy girlfriends. Rachel Jerram and Joshua Dallas play Polly and Tony in Talbot’s production, which also features Summer Strallen, Steven Pacey, Anna Nicholas and, as a lecherous lord, Talbot himself.

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