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Me & My Girl Tours Eight Months Before Transfer

As previously tipped (See The Goss, 14 Mar 2006), Bill Snibson and Sally will be doing the Lambeth Walk again later this year. A major new production of the classic 1937 musical comedy Me and My Girl will open on 1 September 2006 at the Theatre Royal Plymouth and will then embark on an eight-month tour ahead of an anticipated West End transfer in 2007.

In 1985, Robert Lindsay - with the help of "his girl", a young Emma Thompson - famously made the part of cockney millionaire heir Bill Snibson his own in a revival at the West End’s Adelphi Theatre. Lindsay won an Olivier and a Tony, while the production played for more than eight years in London and three years on Broadway.

The new production - directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle (protégé of Susan Stroman) and designed by Walt Spangler – stars Richard Frame (Our House and, most recently, Promises Promises in Sheffield) and Steps’ Faye Tozer (Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat) as Sally Smith. The cast also features Sylvester McCoy, Trevor Bannister and Dillie Keane.

Me and My Girl has music by Noel Gay and lyrics by L Arthur Rose and Douglas Furber who also jointly wrote the book, which was revised in the Eighties by actor-writer-comedian Stephen Fry with contribution by Mike Ockrent. The score includes songs like “Leaning on a Lamppost”, “The Sun Has Got His Hat On”, “Lambeth Walk” and the title number.

This long-planned revival was previously expected at the West End’s New London Theatre in May 2004, but that opening was shelved after the success of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat rendered it homeless (See The Goss, 24 Dec 2003).

Following Plymouth, Me and My Girl will continue to Sheffield, Manchester, Malvern, Woking, Wolverhampton, Edinburgh, York, Leeds, Stoke-on-Trent, Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow, Bradford, Birmingham, Newcastle, Cardiff and Southampton, where its schedule concludes – with some dates still to be confirmed – at the end of April 2007. The musical is presented on tour by Alex Armitage for Noel Gay Productions and Edward Snape for Fiery Angel.

- by Terri Paddock

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