Photo Flash: New Shots of Betty Buckley and More in West End's DEAR WORLD

Katy Treharne and Stuart Matthew Price star as 'Nina' and 'Julian', the two young lovers. Peter Land, Robert Meadmore and Jack Rebaldi star as the 'Presidents', Ayman Safia plays the 'Mute'. The cast also includes Anthony Barclay as the 'Prospector', Brett Brown as the 'Waiter', Michael Chance as the 'Sargeant', Annabel Leventon as 'Constance', Rebecca Lock as 'Gabrielle', Joanna Loxton, and Craig Nicholls.

DEAR WORLD premiered on Broadway in 1969 starring Angela Lansbury, who went on to win the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of the 'Countess Aurelia', and Milo O'Shea as the 'Sewerman'.

Based on Jean Giraudoux's play The Madwoman of Chaillot, it centres around the Countess, living in the basement of a Parisian bistrot in 1945, driven mad by a lost lover and bemoaning her past. When oil is discovered under the streets of the city, she and her motley crew of acquaintances must band together to stop rapacious businessmen from destroying her home, and indeed all of Paris.

This surreal musical fable of Good versus Evil (ahead of its time in 1969), with its themes of environmental degradation, corporate greed, evil and human folly, is a resonant and cautionary tale in a post-Enron world.