Hare s Blue Room Returns to West End, 2 Oct

The Chichester Festival production of David Hare's The Blue Room will transfer to the West End this autumn. The production, which has been a sell-out at Chichester's Minerva Theatre, opens for a limited eight-week season at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on 2 October 2000, following previews from 28 September.

The Blue Room received its world premiere two years ago at the Donmar Warehouse where Sam Mendes highly acclaimed production, in which film star Nicole Kidman disrobed, got critics and audiences steaming. That production subsequently transferred to Broadway.

Hare's modern play is freely adapted from Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde. It was never Schnitzler's intention that his loose series of sexual scenes, written in 1900, should be publicly performed. And perhaps for good reason, considering the contemporary moral views. The eventual premiere of La Ronde in 1921 was closed down, and the actors were charged with obscenity. Max Ophul's film version, starring Jean-Louis Barrault, Gerard Philippe, Simone Signoret and Danielle Darrieux, was released in 1950.

In The Blue Room, ten different characters, involved in a series of sexual liaisons, are played by just two actors. The current production stars Camilla Power and Michael Higgs. Power's stage credits include The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at the National, while on television, she has featured in Family Tree, The Echo, The Double and Underworld. Higgs stage credits include Romeo and Juliet and Columbus with the RSC and Veteran's Day at the Theatre Royal Haymarket.

The Blue Room is directed by Loveday Ingram, an associate director of the Minerva Theatre whose other credits include Pal Joey and Insignificance. It is designed by Colin Falconer, with lighting by Sam Gibbons, music by Martin Lowe and sound by Steve McEvoy.

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