Re-cast Cooking with Elvis Extends to 21 Oct
Date: 31 August 2000
Lee Hall's dark comedy Cooking with Elvis, currently starring comedian Frank Skinner at the Whitehall Theatre, has announced a surprise extension. The play, which opened in the West End on 14 March 2000 following previews from 6 March, announced earlier this month that it would be closing this Saturday, 2 September. It has now been re-cast and has opened a new booking period to 21 October 2000.
The new cast includes Kate Fitzgerald (from TV's Brookside) along with Robert Curbishley, Eleanor Quine and Deka Walmsley. They take over from the current cast which, along with Skinner, features Joe Caffrey, Charlie Hardwick and Sharon Percy. Max Roberts directs.
The play, which was a hit at last year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe, centres around a 14-year-old girl who becomes obsessed with food while her mother goes on the pull for a toyboy after a car accident has reduced her husband, a part-time Elvis impersonator, to a vegetative state. Enter an unlikely charmer called Stuart, played by Skinner, to shake up the dysfunctional family further. The production is directed by Max Roberts and also stars Sharon Percy, Charlie Hardwick and Joe Caffrey.
Lee Hall is considered one of the country's hottest young playwrights. In the first four months of this year, he had a total of four productions transfer to London. In addition to Whitehall Theatre, there was his adaptation of Carlo Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters for the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Young Vic; Spoonface Steinberg which had a three-week run at the New Ambassadors in January; and his version of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children, produced by Shared Experience, which played at the same theatre in March. The obviously enamoured New Ambassadors will also be bringing The Servant of Two Masters back to the West End for a Christmas run from 14 December 2000 to 3 February 2001.
Hall's previous theatre credits include the much lauded Mr Puntila and His Man Matti, another Brecht adaptation that was co-produced by the Right Size and the Almeida, which was also an Edinburgh festival hit and went on to a nationwide tour and yet another run in the West End last year.
Related Content
