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Chichester Singapore Re-opens May Fair, 2 Jul

The Chichester Festival production of Song of Singapore, starring Issy van Randwyck, will re-open London’s May Fair Theatre, which has not hosted a professional theatre production for a decade. The musical opens at the May Fair on 2 July and continues to 9 September 2001 (with previews from 28 June).

The 300-seat venue is situated in the five-star May Fair Intercontinental Hotel in the West End. First opened as a theatre in 1963, its many previous productions included Six Characters in Search of an Author, starring Ralph Richardson in 1963, Under Milk Wood and Beyond the Fringe. Since 1992, the May Fair has operated as a conference venue.

A hit off-Broadway, Song of Singapore received its British premiere at the Chichester Festival in 1998. This revival begins there as well, running at Chichester’s Minerva Theatre from 29 May to 9 June before transferring on to Greenwich and then London.

Van Randwyck returns to lead the cast as Rose of Rangoon, a sultry saloon singer who has had one helluva life - she just can’t remember it. Set in a Singapore nightclub in 1941, the musical presents a madcap scenario in which enemy troops are at the border, a patron has been murdered, a precious gem stolen, a crooked cop is crooning about romantic liaisons and the club’s star attraction, the Malayan Melody Makers, are planning to defect.

Van Randwyck is joined in the cast by Richard Brightliff, Beatrice Grace, Elio Pace, Martin Roach, Miles Russell, James Wilson, Neil Gore, James Lailey and Julian Tucker. Song of Singapore is directed by Roger Redfarn and designed by Stewart Wood, with lighting by Nigel Hollowell Howard, musical supervision by David Beer, sound by Gregory Clarke and musical staging by Michel Hardy.

- by Terri Paddock

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