Get Your Umbrellas Out on Shaftesbury Avenue???

We hear an announcement is imminent about details of the previously tipped West End transfer for Kneehigh’s upcoming adaptation of Michel Legrand‘s 1964 French film musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The piece premieres next month at Leicester Curve, where it runs from 11 to 26 February 2011, and is expected to head south swiftly thereafter this spring. The story centres on the doomed romance of young lovers Genevieve and Guy, which is interrupted by Guy’s military service. The stage version features new orchestrations by Legrand. It’s designed by Lez Brotherston and directed by Kneehigh artistic director Emma Rice, whose last high-flying success in the West End was her multimedia version of Brief Encounter, which had an extended, sell-out run in a converted cinema on the Haymarket before transferring to Broadway. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is tipped for a more traditional theatrical home on Shaftesbury Avenue.