Clare Waugh (Illa) & Gavin Mitchell (Rick) in Casablanca: The Gin Joint Cut
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EdFringe Casablanca show transfers to Pleasance as part of UK tour

Seventy years on from the release of the classic film, a stage homage to Casablanca, written and directed by BAFTA winner Morag Fullaron, is transferring to the Pleasance Theatre, Islington as part of a national tour. The production premiered at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Casablanca: The Gin Joint Cut is a "distilled" adaptation of the Humphrey Bogart blockbuster in which three actors multi-role in a "comic tour-de-force" set in the iconic gin joint Rick’s Café in Morocco in 1941.

It stars comic actor Gavin Mitchell in Bogart’s role as American café owner Rick Blaine who, as the Nazi takeover of Europe is well underway, welcomes in every lost soul looking for a safe passage, from petty criminals to refugees.

Claire Waugh plays Mitchell’s ex-love Isla Lund, the role that Ingrid Bergman made famous, with Jimmy Chisholm playing Lund’s husband, resistance leader Victor Laszlo (originally Paul Henried).

Writer Morag Fullaron, who previously wrote for Comic Strip Presents, has directed a wide range of television and film projects including the Emmy nominated At Home With the Braithwaites (2000), Von Trapped (2004), starring Caroline Quentin and BAFTA winning This Life (1996) for the BBC. Her theatre credits include the award-winning Mistero Buffo, Glasvegas, the musical she wrote with Patrick Doyle and Ida Tamson for Glasgow’s Òran Mór.

Casablanca premiered 70 years ago in New York on 26 November 1942 and won three Academy Awards, going on to be heralded a classic of the Hollywood golden age.

Casablanca: The Gin Joint Cut is currently on tour (until 11 November) and will run at the Pleasance Theatre, Islington from 2 to 21 October 2012.

- Leone Richmond

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