Show Goes on for Enjoy‘s Opening, Cage & Others

Despite the adverse weather conditions (See Today’s Other News), the show will go on for the opening tonight (2 February 2009, previews from 27 January) of Alan Bennett’s Enjoy at the West End’s Gielgud Theatre. The press performance starts at the earlier scheduled time of 7pm and finishes at 9.30pm.

Producers are hoping critics will be able to battle through to review Christopher Luscombe’s revival of Alan Bennett’s play, which was a famous “flop” when it first opened in the West End in 1980. Theatregoers who are unable to attend because of transport disruptions will be offered exchanges and are advised to contact their point of sale to make arrangements.

Enjoy is set in the playwright’s home town of Leeds, where an ageing couple living in the city’s last, and soon-to-be-demolished back-to-back are soon to be re-housed in a modern maisonette. When a sociologist comes to observe them in their daily life, normality takes a decidedly atypical turn. Alison Steadman and David Troughton lead the cast that also includes Carol Macready, Josie Walker and Richard Glaves.

Also going ahead…

Other major productions whose representatives have confirmed with Whatsonstage.com that their evening performances will be going on tonight, come what may, are: La Cage aux Folles, starring Graham Norton at the Playhouse Theatre; Blood Brothers at the Phoenix; A View from the Bridge at the Duke of York’s; Entertaining Mr Sloane at Trafalgar Studios; La Clique at the London Hippodrome; The Pitmen Painters at the National’s Lyttelton; The 39 Steps at the Criterion; The Woman in Black at the Fortune; Spring Awakening at the Lyric Hammersmith; and most of the productions in Nimax Theatres, which are Three Days of Rain starring James McAvoy and Nigel Harman at the Apollo; Alan Ayckbourn’s Woman in Mind at the Vaudeville; and the musical Buddy at the Duchess Theatre.

Cancellations as of 5.45pm…

Zorro at Nimax’s Garrick Theatre has cancelled because some members of the large company have been unable to reach the theatre. Amongst the many other shows which have pulled performances this evening are: West End musicals Oliver!, Dirty Dancing, Billy Elliot, Wicked, Billy Elliot, Mamma Mia!, Jersey Boys, Oliver!, Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, The Sound of Music, Avenue Q, Stomp, Sunset Boulevard, Grease, Carousel, We Will Rock You and Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Complicit at the Old Vic, Be Near Me at the Donmar Warehouse, The Mousetrap at St Martin’s, On the Waterfront at the Haymarket, Gethsemane at the National’s Cottesloe, A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Novello, Private Lives at Hampstead, Why I Don’t Hate White People at the Lyric Hammersmith, ENO’s La Boheme and the Royal Opera’s Die Tote Stadt.

Twelfth Night at Wyndham’s and Thriller – Live at the Lyric have no Monday evening performance in their weekly schedule.

For further show updates, see the Society of London Theatre website. Theatregoers should contact the relevant box office or point of sale for ticket exchanges.

– by Terri Paddock