Love Story Transfers to Duchess, Ball Produces

Emma Williams and Michael Xavier are due to reprise their starring roles as Jennifer Cavilleri and Oliver Barrett IV (played in the film by Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neal), two American college students who fall in love and get married despite being from opposite ends of the class spectrum. The immortal tagline was “love means never having to say you’re sorry”… especially if one of you contracts cancer.

Love Story has music by Howard Goodall (The Hired Man, Days of Hope, Two Cities), a book by Stephen Clark (The Far Pavilions) and lyrics by Goodall and Clark. It’s directed by Birmingham Rep artistic director Rachel Kavanaugh and designed by Peter McKintosh, with musical direction by Stephen Ridley.

The musical will presented in London by Adam Spiegel, Stephen Waley-Cohen and, in his producing debut, Michael Ball, who was last on the West End stage himself in Hairspray, for which he received the Whatsonstage.com and Olivier Awards for Best Actor in a Musical.

Currently at the Duchess, The Secret of Sherlock Holmes, which opened this Tuesday 20 July (previews from 15 July), is due to finish on 11 September. According to the Daily Mail, between it and Love Story, the Gate Theatre, Dublin’s production of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape starring Michael Gambon will run for ten weeks.