 |
| Willard White in Glyndebourne's Porgy & Bess |
|
| Share |
Nunn Adapts Gershwin Porgy & Bess at Savoy, 9 NovDate: 30 June 2006
As previously tipped (See The Goss, 17 Mar 2006), a major new production of Porgy and Bess will open at the West End’s Savoy Theatre this autumn. Director Trevor Nunn has reworked and adapted the Gershwins’ classic jazz opera as a two-and-a-half hour musical, with music specially adapted by Gareth Valentine. The £3 million premiere production of “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess" will open on 9 November 2006 (previews from 25 October).
Originally a novel by DuBose Heyward, who adapted it as a stage play two years after its publication in 1925, Porgy and Bess is set in 1912 South Carolina, around Charleston's Catfish Row, and centres on cripple Porgy who offers shelter to Bess, recently broken free from her brutish lover. Heyward later collaborated with George and Ira Gershwin to create the jazz opera whose now-classic songs include "Summertime", "I Got Plenty O' Nuttin'" and "It Ain't Necessarily So".
The operatic Porgy and Bess premiered on 10 October 1935 at the Alvin Theatre in New York in a production directed by Rouben Mamoulian. The piece is regarded as one of the landmarks of 20th-century American musical theatre. A 1959 screen version starred Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge.
Nunn previously directed Porgy and Bess at Glyndebourne Festival Opera production in 1986-87. That operatic production, featuring Willard White (pictured) and Cynthia Haymon, was remounted at Covent Garden in 1992, adapted for the screen and recorded for EMI Classics. Nunn’s new version will feature a 60-strong company, with 40 in the cast and a 20-piece orchestra. No casting has yet been announced.
With Porgy and Bess’ announcement, it brings to a total of 20 the number of new musical productions to arrive in the West End in 2006, London’s most musically populated theatre year in living memory. Other big blockbusters scheduled for this autumn alone include the Broadway transfers of Wicked and Spamalot, Australian screen-to-stager Dirty Dancing and revivals of Cabaret and The Sound of Music.
Currently at the Savoy, The Rat Pack, the musical tribute to Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr and Dean Martin, featuring look and sound-alikes of the three crooners, is currently booking until 18 November 2006 and has not yet confirmed its closing date. Porgy and Bess is produced in London by Richard Frankel, Tom Viertel, Steven Baruch, Marc Routh, and Howard Panter for the Ambassador Theatre Group and Tulbart Productions.
- by Caroline Ansdell & Terri Paddock
Related Content
