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Musicals Extend: Guys & Dolls, Queen’s Rock You

Two of the West End’s big musicals – Queen’s We Will Rock You and Michael Grandage’s revival of Broadway classic Guys and Dolls - have announced extensions to their booking periods.

We Will Rock You - which celebrated its fourth anniversary on 11 May and only announced its last extension, along with the cancellation of a planned October closure, earlier this month (See News, 2 May 2006) - has added more than five more months to its stay at the Dominion Theatre, where it’s now booking until 6 October 2007.

Set in the future, We Will Rock You tells the story of a world in which globalisation has meant the death of real music in favour of computer-produced cyber stars, a status quo which the rebel Bohemians, harking back to the Golden Age of rock (embodied by Queen), are trying to overthrow so that they can write and perform their own music. An unintentional hero ends up saving the kids of Planet Mall from the tyrannical Killer Queen and discovers the place of living rock.

We Will Rock You has a book by Ben Elton and features 32 of Queen’s greatest hits including "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", "Under Pressure", "Radio Gaga" and, of course, "We Will Rock You". It’s directed by Elton, choreographed by Arlene Phillips and designed by Mark Fisher and Willie Williams.

At the Piccadilly Theatre, Michael Grandage’s multi-award winning production of Guys and Dolls, which opened at the Piccadilly Theatre on 1 June 2005 (previews from 19 May), has extended by four months, taking it up to 30 December 2006.

Based on Damon Runyon’s short stories about New York gamblers and their girls in the 1940s, the musical was made into a 1953 Hollywood film starring Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons and Frank Sinatra. Grandage’s revival, the first new production of Guys and Dolls in London for 23 years, is designed by Christopher Oram, with choreography by Rob Ashford, musical supervision by Jae Alexander, lighting by Howard Harrison and sound by Terry Jardine and Chris Full. It currently stars Sally Ann Triplett, Adam Cooper, Neil Morrissey and Kelly Price, until 24 June 2006. The new cast has not yet been announced.

Meanwhile, a separate touring version of Grandage’s production of Guys and Dolls opens on 16 September 2006 at Glasgow’s King’s Theatre (See News, 19 May 2006).

- by Caroline Ansdell

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