Theatre News

More Edinburgh Transfers Hit Off-West End in Sep

7 September 2009

Barely has the Edinburgh Fringe packed its bags for another year like a dispatched Big Brother housemate than a swathe of London venues have snapped up its best bits for your viewing pleasure. Yes, it’s transfer season – and not just on the football field. Talent scouts were out in force last month to ensure that London theatregoers get the best of the fest come autumn.

We’ve already reported on transfers for Catwalk Confidential to the Arts Theatre, The Stefan Golaszewski Plays to the Bush and a slew of musicals to Jermyn Street. But that’s not all by a long shot. Whatsonstage.com’s Off-West End deputy editor Nancy Groves has scoured the venue listings to round up what else has made the trip south this month.

Theatre 503
A double dose of Fringe depravity is already up and running in Battersea. Hooked (2-9 September) is an addictive new musical from Rik Mayall’s writing partner Max Kinnings, which ran at the Musical Theatre at George Square last month, and Jane Austen’s Guide to Pornography, an irreverent spat between a modern pornographic playwright and the Pride and Prejudice author (2-12 September) won The Scotsman’s ‘Filthiest Show Not Involving Nudity Award’ in 2008.

In contrast, The Bay, which transfers to 503 this week (7-11 September) after playing Edinburgh’s C-Soco, is based on the real events that turned a tranquil cove in County Cork into a murder scene. Hannah Burke’s play charts the mental and literal breakdown of a New Age community in a production from Fragments (Ireland) company, directed by Shane Dempsey.

Soho Theatre
Later this month, Soho welcomes Bette Bourne’s A Life in Three Acts (21-27 September) and Dennis Kelly’s Orphans (30 September-October 24), both Fringe First-winning successes at the Traverse in August. In the former, pioneering gay performer Bette Bourne reminisces with playwright Mark Ravenhill, recreating moving conversations the two friends have had in real life. Meanwhile, Orphans reunites the team behind the 2005 Traverse production of Kelly’s After the End, led by director Roxana Silbert, for another chilling thriller about family ties and the modern urban existence.

Jermyn St Theatre
Jermyn Street doesn’t just pick up musicals from Edinburgh. After a sell-out Assembly run, Words of Honour: The Mafia Exposed receives its London premiere in Piccadilly (7 September-3 October) en route to a November run in Rome. Lifting the lid on the world’s most infamous criminal organisation, performer Marco Gambino adapted this one-man show from the best-selling book Parole d’Onore by Italian investigative journalist Attilio Bolzoni.

Union Theatre
Finally, a new production of Michael John LaChiusa’s First Lady Suite so impressed at George Square that producers Take Note Theatre are backing a Southwark transfer at the end of this month (29 September-17 October). LaChiusa’s show, which premiered Off-Broadway in 2003, takes its audience into the hearts and minds of America’s most famous First Ladies – Eleanor Roosevelt and Jackie Kennedy among them – providing some cracking parts for more mature West End performers in the process.