Gray’s Last Cigarette Transfers to Trafalgar, 28 Apr

As previously tipped (See The Goss, 5 Nov 2008), the Chichester Festival Theatre production of Simon Gray’s The Last Cigarette – which stars Felicity Kendal, Nicholas Le Prevost and Jasper Britton – has confirmed its West End transfer, opening at the Trafalgar Studios on 28 April 2009 (previews from 21 April), where it continues to 1 August 2009.

The Last Cigarette, written by the Hugh Whitemore in collaboration with Gray shortly before his death last summer, is adapted from Gray’s final volume of Smoking Diaries, which give voice to his memoirs and thoughts as he is “forced to look his own mortality in the eye”. Kendal, Le Prevost and Britton all portray the playwright through the course of the play.

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. It opened in Chichester on 17 March (previews from 11 March), where it continues to 11 April (See News, 23 Jan 2009).

Meanwhile, from 14 April to 9 May 2009, Trafalgar Studios 2 hosts Matthew Kelly‘s return to the West End in Edward Albee’s 1962 classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (See News, 13 Mar 2009).

– by Theo Bosanquet