The National Theatre will stage an epic “true-life Slumdog Millionaire play” next year, according to the Daily Mail.
David Hare is reportedly adapting Katherine Boo’s non-fiction book Behind The Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death And Hope In A Mumbai Undercity for a production to be staged in the Olivier in “autumn 2014”, directed by Rufus Norris.
The book, which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2012, centres on the residents of Annawadi, a slum at the edge of Mumbai Airport. When a crime rocks the slum community and global recession and terrorism shocks the city, tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy begin to turn brutal.
Hare’s many previous plays for the National include The Power of Yes, Gethsemane, Stuff Happens and Skylight.
According to the Mail his latest project will be staged “using all the behind-the-scenes firepower the NT can muster to bring the
swarming, stinking slum scattered around Sahar international airport in
Annawadi to bustling, vibrant life.”
Norris is an associate of the National, where his productions include Table, London Road, Death and the King’s Horseman and Market Boy.
Norris may well be in the running to succeed Hytner as artistic director of the National, with many previous favourites – including Stephen Daldry, Danny Boyle and Dominic Cooke – having ruled themselves out in recent weeks.
The Mail‘s Baz Bamigboye also reports that a stage musical adaptation of Boyle’s Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire is in development, but is “still several years away”.
