Photos

1st Night Photos: Kendal & Co Light Up Trafalgar

Editorial Staff
London's West End


The West End transfer of The Last Cigarette, adapted from playwright Simon Gray’s final volume of Smoking Diaries, opened last night at the Trafalgar Studios (28 April 2009, previews from 21 April), attracting what Whatsonstage.com’s Michael Coveney termed an “unusually high class turn out” (click here to read his blog).

The Last Cigarette, written by the Hugh Whitemore in collaboration with Gray shortly before his death last summer, gives voice to his memoirs and thoughts as he is “forced to look his own mortality in the eye”. Felicity Kendal, Nicholas Le Prevost and Jasper Britton all portray the playwright through the course of the play.

TO SCROLL THROUGH ALL OF THE LAST CIGARETTE‘s 1st NIGHT PHOTOS,
JUST CLICK ON THE “NEXT >” LINKS BELOW THE FOLLOWING FRAME.
PHOTOS BY DAN WOOLLER FOR WHATSONSTAGE.COM.

For 1st Night Photos, our Whatsonstage.com photographer Dan Wooller was on hand for the curtain call and after party at Walkers of Whitehall, where first night guests included Barry Humphries, Lizzie Spender, David Bradley, Jessica de Rothschild, Michael White and Australian playwright Tommy Murphy.

The author of more than 30 plays including Quartermaine’s Terms, Otherwise Engaged and Butley, lifelong smoker Gray passed away on 6 August 2008 after a battle with cancer (See News, 8 Aug 2008). The premiere production of The Last Cigarette is directed by former National Theatre artistic director Richard Eyre and designed by Rob Howell, with music by George Fenton.

The Last Cigarette is currently booking at the Trafalgar Studios to 1 August 2009.

– by Theo Bosanquet