Clarke Peters and Nicola Hughes will take on two of musical theatre's most famous roles with Trevor Nunn's abridged London staging of the Gershwin classic Porgy and Bess.
Trimmed down by Nunn from four hours to two and a half,
Porgy and Bess
will begin performances at the Savoy Theatre in London on October 25th
and open on November 9th. The production will also star Cornell John (
Les Miserables, The Full Monty in London) as Crown, Dawn Hope (
Simply Heavenly, Ain't Misbehavin') as Serena, and OT Fagbenle (
Six Degrees of Separation) as Sportin' Life.
Peters' other credits include
Mourning Becomes Electra and
Driving Miss Daisy. On Broadway, he has been seen in
The Iceman Cometh, Chicago and
Five Guys Named Moe, for which he penned the book. Hughes has been seen in
Fosse, Damn Yankees and
The Who's Tommy. Together, they have starred in London in
Chicago and
Simply Heavenly.Tony Award-winner Nunn (The Woman in White, Les Miserables)--who helmed an acclaimed production of Porgy and Bess at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera in 1986--has adapted the opera into the musical The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess.
."..About three years ago, he said, he approached the Gershwin estate
with the idea of turning the opera into a musical by fashioning a book
out of the 1925 novel, the subsequent play and the opera's libretto by
DuBose Heyward (whose wife, Dorothy, co-wrote the play) and some other
historical materials. The estate approved of his version, and he has
invited members of the Gershwin family along for the process, including
a workshop last year," stated an earlier New York Times article.
Frankel/Viertel/Baruch/Routh
Group, and Howard Panter for the Ambassador Theater Group and Tulbart
Productions will produce the London production, which is capitalized
for $5 million. They will also handle the Broadway transfer, for which a theatre and dates have not yet been announced.Porgy and Bess,
which features music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Heyward and Ira
Gershwin and a book by Heyward (based on his and Dorothy Heyward's Porgy),
concerns the romance between the title characters, two African-American
denizens of poverty-stricken Catfish Row in Charleston, South
Carolina. Although the original 1935 run of Porgy and Bess ran
for just 124 performances and was considered a disappointment by some
critics, the "American folk opera" is now acclaimed as Gershwin's
masterwork and is regularly performed by opera companies (it has also
had five more productions on Broadway).While the famous songs
(such as "Summertime," "Bess, You Is My Woman Now" and "I Got Plenty
O'Nuttin'") will be in place, composer/arranger Gareth Valentine has
adapted some of the music. Nunn has also expanded some of the spoken
scenes and made some structural changes.
"Since
I've done everything I can with the opera to underline its credentials,
I hope I won't be perceived as someone who's doing an insensitive thing
in attempting a different version, so that a wider public gets to
appreciate this extraordinary music," Nunn told the Times.
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