Original Rock 'n' Roll Musical, ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN, Launches in Coventry

Audiences from across Coventry enjoyed a trip back in time to the golden age of rock 'n' roll earlier this week for the official launch of the Belgrade Theatre's brand new production of Roll Over Beethoven, an original British rock 'n' roll musical arriving on the Main Stage from Sat 3 - Sat 17 September 2016.

The 1950s-themed launch event, held at The Rialto Reborn in Coundon, was attended by representatives of Coventry and Warwickshire's local business community, members of the Belgrade Theatre's Producers' Circle and associated VIPs including the Lord Mayor of Coventry, Councillor Lindsey Harvard and Laura McMillan, Bid Co-ordinator for Coventry 2021.

As part of the evening's celebrations, guests indulged in miniature hot dogs and hamburgers and jived the night away to classic rock 'n' roll music, provided by Coventry-based rockabilly band the SixOne20's. Guest speakers at the event included Bob Eaton, Writer and Director of Roll Over Beethoven, Coventry Telegraph columnist Pete Clemons and Susan Moore, the daughter of Reg Calvert, founder of Radio City and former manager of The Fortunes, Pinkertons Assorted Colours, Screaming Lord Sutch and other pop groups.

Roll Over Beethoven is a fun, high-energy new musical that tells the story of how dreary, post-war England was transformed forever by American Rock 'n' Roll

Bringing a blaze of neon colour to the monochrome streets of blighty, this thrilling new juke-box musical is the latest in a series of smash-hit productions by Writer/Director Bob Eaton, best known to Coventry audiences for scoring a hit with Three Minute Heroes back in 2014.

Relocating Shakespeare's classic tale of adolescent angst, teenage rebellion, family feuds and the ghosts of generations' past to Britain in the late 1950s, Roll Over Beethoven is, at once, a playful and highly entertaining tribute to a defining moment in UK music history, the birth of Rock 'n' Roll.

Writer/Director Bob Eaton said: 'My idea was always to tell the story of the coming of Rock 'n' Roll to the UK and how the music gave an energy to the rebellion of youth against the old, grey, black and white world of 1950s austerity England. The play takes place in 1956 against the backdrop of a typical, English suburban town, 1956, in my mind, being the crucial year when rock 'n' roll first exploded onto the scene in this country and, incidentally, the year in which 'Roll Over Beethoven' by Chuck Berry was first released. This was a whole generation before The Beatles, before the whole British invasion even took place. These were the original young ones, trail blazers who took the music that was setting America alive across the waters and made it their own!'

This feel-good musical-drama features a talented cast of actor-musicians including West End actor Michael Fletcher in the role of Johnny Hamlet, best known to TV audiences for reaching the final 20 in ITV's Superstar, a nationwide search to find an actor to play Jesus in a UK wide arena tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber's hit musical Jesus Christ Superstar.

He will be joined by Chloe Edwards-Wood as Ophelia, Niall Kerrigan as Waltzer, Oliver Beamish as Claud, Al Twist as Ronny Rozencrantz and The Vicar, Matt Devitt as The Ghost, Georgina Field as Gertie, Steve Marwick as Henry Polonius, Adam Langstaff as Guy Guildenstern and Horace and Joe Eaton-Kent as Larry, who was last seen at the Belgrade starring in Bob Eaton's smash-hit 2014 production of Three Minute Heroes.

Having begun his career as a Director, Writer and Actor back in 1971, Bob's incredible career in theatre has seen him direct more than eighty professional productions in English regional theatre, London, New York, Dublin and Hong Kong as well as writing or co-writing over twenty plays, musicals and musical adaptations. As a former Artistic Director of The Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, The London Bubble and The Belgrade Theatre between 1995 and 2003, Bob's life-long passion for bringing popular music and theatre together has inspired many a smash-hit production including the Olivier award-nominated Lennon, first produced at the Liverpool Everyman in 1981, Our Day Out - The Musical with Willy Russell and the hugely popular 2-Tone musical Three Minute Heroes which premiered at the Belgrade Theatre in 2000 starring Tupele Dorgu and was later revived in 2014 to great critical and audience acclaim.

The production will run for two weeks on the Belgrade Main Stage from Sat 3 - Sat 17 Sept. Tickets for Roll Over Beethoven are priced from £19 - £27 with concessions available.

For more information and to book tickets, call the Belgrade Box Office on 024 7655 3055 or visit www.belgrade.co.uk where tickets are cheaper.

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