Elaine Stritch Is at Liberty Again in London, 31 Jul

Six years after a sell-out season at the Old Vic (See News, 2 Jul 2002), octogenarian Broadway legend Elaine Stritch (pictured) will bring her Tony Award-winning one-woman show, Elaine Stritch at Liberty back to London this summer, running for a limited season from 31 July to 10 August 2008 at the Shaw Theatre.

In the show, devised by John Lahr, Stritch recounts personal experiences from her long career in a mix of anecdotes and live music. First seen in November 2001 Off-Broadway, the production transferred in February 2002 to Broadway’s Neil Simon Theatre and went on to win a 2002 Tony Award for Best Theatrical Event and two Drama Desk Awards, for Outstanding Solo Performance and Outstanding Book of a Musical.

Elaine Stritch at Liberty had its West End premiere in October 2002 at the Old Vic, where it had an extended three-month season. Stritch revived the piece, with Rob Bowman as musical director, at New York’s Carlyle Hotel earlier this year.

Stritch’s career on Broadway has spanned more than five decades, following her 1944 debut in Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes. Her other myriad stage credits include Company, Bus Stop, Call Me Madam, A Delicate Balance, On our Toes, Angels in the Wings, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Sail Away. The actress is familiar to UK television audiences for her 1970s turn opposite Donald Sinden in Two’s Company and to London theatregoers for West End appearances in Love Letters, The Gingerbread Lady and Small Craft Warnings.

– by Terri Paddock