Judi Dench, Jude Law, Daniel Radcliffe et al. Set for Michael Grandage's New West End Season

According to the Daily Mail's Baz Bamigboye, Michael Grandage is bringing together UK's cream of the crop for his fledgling West End theatre company's new season at Noel Coward Theatre, beginning Dec. 1.

Read the original report here.

Judi Dench, Daniel Radcliffe, Jude Law, Simon Russell Beale, Sheridan Smith, David Walliams and Ben Whishaw are set to star in five plays for The Michael Grandage Company, each running 12 weeks.

Dench is set for a new, Alice In Wonderland/Peter Pan-inspired work by John Logan, Radcliffe will appear in McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan, Law stars in Henry V, Beale will play in Privates on Parade, and Smith and Walliams appear in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Peter Nichols' Privates on Parade, with score by Denis King, launches the season featuring Beale as Captain Terri Dennis and an opening night set for Dec. 10. Grandage previously directed a 2001 version starring Roger Allam and James McAvoy. "Parade" is a campy comedy about a musical unit in the Malayan jungle around 1948.

Peter and Alice by John Logan opens at the Noel Coward Theatre on March 25, 2013, running through June 1 and starring Dench as Alice Liddell Hargreaves. Hargreaves inspired Lewis Carroll to write Alice in Wonderland. Ben Whishaw plays opposite Dench as Peter Llewelyn Davies, who inspired J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan.

Grandage told Bamigboye: "You have the real-life figures of Alice Liddell Hargreaves and Peter Llewelyn Davies, who met each other briefly for about 40 minutes. John Logan imagined what they said to each other, and that’s the basis for the play."

According to Bamigboye's article, Radcliffe is rearing to take the stage in The Cripple of Inishmaan, set in Ireland's Aran Islands and centering on the story of "Cripple Billy," a bullied and badgered young man with a crippled arm, who sets off to find his fame.

The season's fourth production will be A Midsummer Night's Dream, with Sheridan playing Tatania the Queen of the Fairies and Walliams appearing as Bottom. The opening is a ways off—not until September 7, 2013. The show employs designers Christopher Oram and Paule Constable.

Henry V, starring Law, is the final production of the new season, and runs Nov. 23, 2013, through Feb. 15, 2014. Law recently appeared in the Donmar West End run of Hamlet.

Tickets for the season's productions will be offered at £57.50, £27.50 and £10.

For more, visit michaelgrandagecompany.com.

Photo Credit: Peter James Zielinski

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