Remaining West End Longrunners Extend BookingDate: 31 January 2002
Undeterred by the closures of fellow stalwarts Starlight Express, Cats and Buddy, most of the remaining West End longrunners have recently extended their booking periods, taking many up to the end of 2002.
Cameron Mackintosh's production ofLes Miserables, which marked its 16th birthday in the West End in October 2001, has opened a new nine-month booking period, covering 1 April to 21 December 2002, at the Palace Theatre. Boubil and Schonberg's musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's epic novel about the French revolution premiered in 1985 and has gone on to be seen by more than 45 million people in 30 countries around the world. Once Cats closes, Les Mis will become the longest running West End musical still running.
But another Andrew Lloyd Webber product (also produced by Mackintosh) follows close behind - The Phantom of the Opera which opened at Her Majesty's Theatre on 9 October 1986 and which marked its 15th birthday this past year. In 1999, the musical, based on Gaston Leroux's gothic novel about a masked man who falls in love with an ingénue singer at the Pairs Opera House, was named as the 20th century's most successful money-making show, dwarfing even Hollywood rivals like Titanic at the box office. Phantom also made its original leads - Sarah Brightmand and Michael Crawford into international stars. It too has now extended its West End booking by nine months up to 21 December 2002.
Meanwhile, Willy Russell's Liverpudlian musical about twin brothers separated at birth, Blood Brothers, has added five months to its booking period, taking it up to 28 September 2002. Now in its 14th year in the West End, it first opened in 1988 at the Albery Theatre before transferring to its current home at the Phoenix in 1991.
Stephen Daldry's multi award-winning - and non-musical - adaptation of JB Priestley's 1946 thriller An Inspector Calls has added two months, up to 30 March 2002, onto its booking period at the Playhouse Theatre. Originally seen at the National Theatre in 1991, the production had subsequent seasons at the West End's Aldwych Theatre and on Broadway before transferring in October 1995 to the West End's Garrick Theatre, where it resided for six years. It pulled out of there in April 2001 and had a summer break before re-opening at the Playhouse last September.
Not quite in the same league in terms of longevity but considered West End musical heavyweights nonetheless, both Disney's The Lion King and Trevor Nunn's NT revival of My Fair Lady, produced in the West End by Cameron Mackintosh, have also announced booking extensions. The former, which opened at the Lyceum Theatre in October 1999, is now taking bookings from 2 July to 29 September 2002. The latter, having transferred from the National to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane last July, is following the lead of its fellow Mackintosh productions by extending its booking period (by four months) to 21 December 2002.
- by Terri Paddock
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