Following its triumph at Sunday’s Theatre Awards UK, rumours have hotted up that The Go-Between, a
new musical adaptation of LP Hartley’s 1953 romantic novel, is West End-bound.
The show is written by prolific children’s author David Wood and
composer Richard Taylor and premiered at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds
in September 2011.
Set in the heat and humidity of the rural Norfolk summer in 1900, it
centres on a young boy who comes of age as he is unwittingly enlisted as
a messenger in an adult affair of deceit and desire.
If it does transfer to London it would mark something of a homecoming
for the show, which was first seen as a work-in-progress at Trafalgar
Studios 2 in 2009 as part of the Whatsonstage.com-supported Perfect Pitch initiative.
At Sunday’s Theatre Awards UK – where The Go-Between scooped Best Musical – Whatsonstage.com spotted the show’s producers approaching Michael Ball to star in the show in the West End.
The ever-busy Ball was there to collect the award for Best Performance in a Musical on behalf of his Sweeney Todd co-star Imelda Staunton. He told Whatsonstage.com he’s keen to do more collaborations with Staunton, asking “could somebody write The Krankies musical?” You heard it here first…