Johnson Follows Mamma with Baby Nothing at BushDate: 29 April 2003
London's Bush Theatre (pictured) will next month present the first new play by author Catherine Johnson since her huge international success with the ABBA musical Mamma Mia!, which first opened in the West End four years ago. Little Baby Nothing, a Bush commission, will receive its world premiere on 23 May 2003 and will continue to 21 June (previews from 21 May).
Little Baby Nothing centres on El, Erin and Joby (aka the Unholy Trinity), 'typical' teenagers who dabble in Satanism, sex and Spar's finest vodka to an extreme metal soundtrack.
Up on the roof of El's Bristol flat, the three friends recite the Lord's Prayer backwards, perfecting chalk pentagrams and making black cloaks out of El's mum's sheets. All good fun - until one of their rituals gets out of hand and El's dead father is invoked.
Little Baby Nothing is directed by Bush artistic director Mike Bradwell and designed by Jonathan Fensom. The cast includes Jem Wall, Suzan Sylvester, Tom Daply, Alice O'Connell and Jenny Platt.
The new play represents a homecoming for Johnson, a former writer-in-residence at the Bush, where she's previously premiered Boy Means Business (1989), Dead Sheep (1991) and Shang-A-Lang (1998). Johnson provided the original book - about an English girl trying to discover her father by reuniting her mother's three ex-beaux for her wedding on a Greek island - for Mamma Mia!, the hit musical based around the songs of 1970s Swedish supergroup ABBA.
Earlier this month, Mamma Mia! celebrated its fourth birthday at the West End's Prince Edward Theatre, where it opened on 6 April 2003, following previews from 23 March. It is now booking at that venue up to 27 March 2004 and is due to transfer to the Prince of Wales Theatre in late 2004. The musical features ABBA disco classics such as "Dancing Queen", "Thank You for the Music", "Take a Chance on Me" and the title song. It's directed by Phyllida Lloyd and designed by Mark Thompson.
Worldwide, Mamma Mia! has so far grossed more than $500 million. The musical opened on Broadway in October 2001, one of multiple productions currently playing around the globe. Audiences in London - where, say promoters, a seat has never gone unsold - have passed the two and a half million mark, equating to more than £80 million grossed at the box office.
- by Terri Paddock
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