GHOST: The Musical Opens In Manchester Tonight Prior To West End Run

Prior to a West End run opening summer 2011, Ghost The Musical will have a strictly limited 7 week season at the Opera House, Manchester, running from 28 March - 14 May 2011.  

Matthew Warchus' production of the Academy award winning film Ghost has music and lyrics by Grammy® award winning Dave Stewart and Glen Ballard. Oscar® winning Bruce Joel Rubin will adapt his original screen play for the stage and write lyrics. Set and costumes designs are by Rob Howell, musical supervision and arrangements by Christopher Nightingale, illusions are by Paul Kieve, with lighting by Hugh Vanstone and sound by Simon Baker.

The cast includes Richard Fleeshman (Sam Wheat), Caissie Levy (Molly Jensen), Sharon D Clarke (Oda Mae Brown), Andrew Langtree (Carl Bruner), Ivan de Freitas (Willie Lopez), Adebayo Bolaji (Subway Ghost), Mark Pearce (Hospital Ghost), Lisa Davina Phillip (Clara) and Jenny Fitzpatrick (Louise). They are joined by ensemble and swing members Jaygan Ayeh, Paul Ayres, Darren Carnall, Rochelle Neil, Michael Peters, Laura Selwood, Yemie Sonuga, Spencer Stafford, Phillipa Stefani, Jez Unwin and Sally Whitehead.

A timeless fantasy about the power of love, Sam is trapped as a ghost between this world and the next trying to communicate with his girlfriend Molly through a phoney psychic in the hope of saving her from his murderer. Ghost, based on the Oscar winning Paramount Pictures film, will feature new music and lyrics as well as the classic Unchained Melody.

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Film of 1990, Ghost won numerous awards worldwide and is one of the biggest grossing films in the UK. It starred Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, Tony Goldwyn and Whoopi Goldberg and was directed by Jerry Zucker. Bruce Joel Rubin's script won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and Whoopi Goldberg won the Oscar® for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. The film's iconic love scene at a potter's wheel was famously performed to The Righteous Brothers' Unchained Melody.

Dave Stewart has built a repertoire of remarkable songs that have been performed by some of the most influential musicians of our time. In 1999 Stewart, along with his Eurythmics partner Annie Lennox, was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Brit Awards having sold over 75 million albums with hits like Here Comes The Rain Again, Who's That Girl, Would I Lie To You, Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves (with Aretha Franklin) and Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). Stewart was recently presented with the Legend in Songwriting award from the City of Hope, and has collaborated, both as a songwriter and producer, with several of today's biggest stars in music. Stewart recently released Dave Stewart Songbook, Vol. 1, that includes his hits with Tom Petty (Don't Come Around Here No More), No Doubt (Underneath It All), Mick Jagger (Old Habits Die Hard) which won a Golden Globe for Best Song in the film Alfie and Celine Dion (Taking Chances). In his new capacity as Nokia's Change Agent, Stewart is charged with leading the Artists Advisory Committee which ensures the artist's point of view is represented in the "new world." In conjunction with his company, Weapons of Mass Entertainment, Stewart is poised to rethink, reshape and reinvent music, film, television, books, theatre, new media and eventually the entire creative process.

Six-time Grammy® award winner Glen Ballard is one of popular music's most accomplished producers/songwriters and arrangers. He has sold more than 150 million records worldwide, and has worked with a diverse array of the finest singers and artists in the business, from Aretha Franklin to Van Halen and Aerosmith to Michael Jackson. One of Ballard's biggest successes involved chart-topping, multi platinum album Jagged Little Pill (33 million worldwide, four Grammys -including Album of the Year) which Ballard co-wrote and produced for Alanis Morissette, and was named Best Album of the Decade (1990s) by Billboard magazine. Ballard has most recently had success writing hit songs for film, including the Grammy® winning and Oscar® nominated Believe for Polar Express, Ordinary Miracle for Charlotte's Web, and A Hero Comes Home for Beowulf.

Bruce Joel Rubin won an Academy Award for his original screenplay, Ghost. He has written numerous other screenplays including Jacob's Ladder, Deep Impact, Stuart Little 2, The Last Mimzy and, most recently, The Time Traveller's Wife. He also wrote and directed My Life. Rubin graduated New York University in 1965 where he majored in motion picture production and direction. He was an assistant film editor at NBC news in the mid-sixties and hitch-hiked around the world in 1966-67. He was also Curator of Film at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York where he helped establish a program called The New American Filmmakers Series. In addition to his film career, Rubin has been a student and teacher of meditation for the past forty years.

InterNational Theatre Director Matthew Warchus' many theatre credits include La Bête which is currently running at the Comedy Theatre prior to a Broadway transfer, Alan Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests for the Old Vic - which he also directed on Broadway, God of Carnage in the West End and on Broadway, Boeing-Boeing in the West End, on tour in the UK and on Broadway, where it won a Tony for Best Revival, Endgame at the Albery Theatre, the multi award-winning Art in London, on Broadway and in Los Angeles, True West for the Donmar Warehouse, The Unexpected Man and Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Buried Child, Life x 3 and Volpone for the National Theatre. In addition he has directed the following musicals - Tell Me on a Sunday, Our House - which won the Olivier Award for Best Musical - and The Lord of the Rings in the West End and Follies on Broadway. His opera productions include Cosi Fan Tutte, Falstaff for English National Opera and Troilus and Cressida for Opera North.

Stage and screen illusionist Paul Kieve's many theatre credits include The Lord of the Rings and The Witches of Eastwick both at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Our House at the Cambridge Theatre, Theatre of Blood for the National Theatre, Scrooge at the London Palladium, The Invisible Man at the Theatre Royal Stratford East and in the West End and Improbable Theatre Company's Cinderella at the Lyric Hammersmith. On film his work includes Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. As well as extensive opera and dance credits, Kieve is a consultant to Derren Brown and David Copperfield and a member of the Magic Circle.

 

LISTINGS INFORMATION

 

Dates 28 March - 14 May 2011

Address Opera House, Quay Street, Manchester M3 3HP

Performance schedule Monday - Saturday at 7.30pm, Thursday & Saturday matinees at 2.30pm

first Thursday matinee on 21 April at 2.30pm

extra matinees Tuesdays 19 & 26 April at 2.30pm

Access performance captioned performance Saturday 7 May at 2.30pm

Box Office 0844 847 2295

Ticket prices £17.50 - £43.50, plus concessions

Website www.ghostthemusical.com