Dead Monkey Poised for Off-Broadway Transfer

Nick Darke's bizarre black comedy The Dead Monkey, which opens in the West End at the Whitehall Theatre on 29 September 1998 for a limited 12-week run(previews from 23 September), is already being mooted for a New York transfer to the off-broadway Gramercy Theatre.

Gramery theatre owner, Chase Mishkin, has joined producing team David Soul and Alexa Hamilton, who also star in the show, as an Associate Producer to present the West End production. She will fly in to London prior to the opening night. Discussions are now under way for the New York move.

Mishkin is a successful New York producer. Her Broadway credits include The Beauty Queen of Leenane which won four Tony Awards, The Apple Doesn't Fall and The Herbal Bed. Off-Broadway credits include As Bees in Honey Drown, the current Collected Stories, and the acclaimed production of Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde which opens later this month at the Theatre Royal, Plymouth.

The Dead Monkey, written by the British playwright in 1986, is set against a surrealistic California landscape and explores the bonds that hold a relationship together after passion has faded. For Dolores and Hank, it's a monkey that binds them. Soul plays Hank, once a tanned, taut surfer dude and now, 15 years later, a washed up travelling salesman. Hamilton plays his wife who has been caught up in an unusual ménage à trois.

Although perhaps best-known for his role in 70s American cop show Starsky and Hutch and for his recording forays, Soul has worked extensively in theatre. He recently played the Narrator in the West End production of Willy Russell's Blood Brothers, a role he originated in Australia and New Zealand. Other British credits include Speed the Plow at the Theatre Royal, Lincoln, the national tour of The Aspern Papers and the London production of Catch Me If You Can. Hamilton also appeared in the Lincoln production of Speed the Plow; her other British stage credits include Missing in Action (M.I.A) at the Grace and Jermyn Street Theatres.

This production of The Dead Monkey, directed by Brennan Street, premiered in March at north London fringe venue the New End Theatre. The play was originally produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company at The Barbican Pit in 1986. Nick Darke's latest play, The Riot, is scheduled to appear at the Royal National Theatre this winter.

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