GOSSIP: ANGELA LANSBURY BACK IN WEST END?
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London Theatre Direct
Angela Lansbury stole the show at Sunday's Olivier Awards leading a tribue to special award winner, Stephen Sondheim. A special tribute to the composer-lyricist’s work and contributions to theatre in London featured Tony Award winner Angela Lansbury performing “Liaisons” from A Little Night Music and Adrian Lester re-creating part of his Olivier Award-winning performance as Bobby, singing “Being Alive” from Company.
Now it is rumoured that Angela Lansbury could be back on a West End stage soon playing Rupert Everett's mother in the roll of Mrs Higgins in Pygmalion, which opens on 25th May (previews from 12th May). Everett along with his Eliza Doolittle, Kara Tointon were also at the Olivers as presenters and Rupert Everett made his Broadway debut in the 2009 revival of Blithe Spirit alongs side a certain Angela Lansubry...
The show will be directed by director Philip Prose, who also took part in the Chichester production. PYGMALION will play the Garrick Theatre, May 12 through September 3.
Lansbury has starred in the Broadway productions of Gypsy, Mame and Sweeney Todd. Lansbury is perhaps best known to modern audiences for her 12 year run as writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher on the U.S. television series Murder, She Wrote, in which she starred from 1984 to 1996.
Her recent roles include Lady Adelaide Stitch in the 2005 film Nanny McPhee, Leona Mullen in the 2007 Broadway play Deuce, Madame Arcati in the 2009 Broadway revival of the play Blithe Spirit (2009) and Madame Armfeldt in the 2010 Broadway revival of the musical A Little Night Music.
Pygmalion is about Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins, who makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a comment on women's independence, packaged as a romantic comedy.
Book Pygmalion tickets now.
[posted by Louise, 17/03/2011]