Jane McDonald Joins Newcomers in Musical RomeoDate: 15 August 2002
Recording artist and reality TV star Jane McDonald will make her West End acting debut this autumn in the UK premiere of Don Black's Romeo and Juliet - The Musical, which is now scheduled to open at the Piccadilly Theatre on 4 November 2002, following previews from 15 October.
A former club singer, McDonald (pictured), who plays the nurse in the £2.5 million Bard-inspired show, became a household name following the BBC's 1998 docu-soap The Cruise, which followed the entertainer and her colleagues over several months on The Galaxy ocean cruiseliner. Since then, McDonald has released three albums, mounted numerous UK concert tours, played a sell-out evening at the Royal Albert Hall and hosted her own new talent TV programme, "Star for a Night".
In Romeo and Juliet - The Musical, McDonald will appear opposite the young lovers played by Australian Andrew Bevis (Sweeney Todd, Les Miserables) and, making her professional debut, 15-year-old Lorna Want. The Coventry-born Want is already being groomed for a pop career by 19 group, the talent agency run by Pop Idol judges Simon Fuller and Nicky Chapman, who steered her towards the open auditions for the new stage musical.
First seen in Paris in January 2001, Romeo et Juliette has since become one of the most successful French-language musicals of all time, with 20 original songs by Gerard Presgurvic. Over one million people have seen the show, which launches a new tour later this year, while the cast recording has spawned three No 1 singles and sold a total of six million copies combined.
The English language version will feature the same music but with new lyrics by Don Black (best known to UK theatregoers for his various collaborations with composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, including Song and Dance, Aspects of Love, Sunset Boulevard and Bombay Dreams, for which he provided the English lyrics to AR Rahman's Indian music) and a book by Black and Opera Factory's David Freeman, who also directs.
Also signed up for the London creative team are John Cameron (Les Miserables, Spend Spend Spend, La Cava and Honk!), who provides the musical arrangements, and David Roger, designing both the sets and costumes.
Unlike Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's classic West Side Story, which transplanted Shakespeare's love story to 20th-century gangland New York, Romeo and Juliet - The Musical will stay largely faithful to the original. While the dialogue is updated and modern pop music added, the story and characters as well as the Renaissance Verona setting remain.
- by Terri Paddock
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