Love Story Transfers to Duchess, Ball Produces

As previously tipped, the musical version of Love Story, inspired by Erich Segal\'s best-selling weepie novel and subsequent 1970 film, will transfer to the West End following its premiere this summer at Chichester Festival. It’s now confirmed to open on 6 December 2010 (previews from 27 November) at the Duchess Theatre, where it’s initially booking until 26 February 2011.

Emma Williams and Michael Xavier are due to reprise their starring roles as Jennifer Cavilleri and Oliver Barrett IV (played in the film by Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neal), two American college students who fall in love and get married despite being from opposite ends of the class spectrum. The immortal tagline was “love means never having to say you’re sorry”… especially if one of you contracts cancer.

Love Story has music by Howard Goodall (The Hired Man, Days of Hope, Two Cities), a book by Stephen Clark (The Far Pavilions) and lyrics by Goodall and Clark. It’s directed by Birmingham Rep artistic director Rachel Kavanaugh and designed by Peter McKintosh, with musical direction by Stephen Ridley.

The musical will presented in London by Adam Spiegel, Stephen Waley-Cohen and, in his producing debut, Michael Ball, who was last on the West End stage himself in Hairspray, for which he received the Whatsonstage.com and Olivier Awards for Best Actor in a Musical.

Currently at the Duchess, The Secret of Sherlock Holmes, which opened this Tuesday 20 July (previews from 15 July), is due to finish on 11 September. According to the Daily Mail, between it and Love Story, the Gate Theatre, Dublin’s production of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape starring Michael Gambon will run for ten weeks.