Addicted To You Season Kicks Off With END OF THE RAINBOW At Northhampton

End of the Rainbow launches Addicted to You season - three CONTEMPORARY plays that explore the DARKER SIDE OF HUMAN NATURE, made in northampton 2010 at Royal & Derngate

The first in a season exploring addiction in its many incarnations, End of the Rainbow by Peter Quilter, which opens on the Royal stage at Royal & Derngate Northampton on Friday 5th February, is a savagely funny musical drama documenting Judy Garland's 1968 comeback tour.

In her London hotel room, with a new young fiancé at her side, Garland battles a tornado of drugs and alcohol as she undertakes an exhausting series of concerts in a bid to reclaim her crown as the greatest talent of her generation. Despite a series of failed marriages and a wrecked Hollywood career, she remains a tough and remarkable woman, always armed to the teeth with her legendary razor-sharp wit.

Brilliantly weaving the humour and heartbreak of her final months with her most memorable songs, including Get Happy, Come Rain or Come Shine and Somewhere Over the Rainbow, the production will entertain as well as give an insight into this iconic star. A sell-out show when it received its World Premier at the Sydney Opera House in 2005, it was also a huge hit at the Assembly Hall, Edinburgh festival in 2006. Starring Olivier award winner Tracie Bennett (La Cage aux Folles and Hairspray) as Judy and Hilton McRae (Caroline, or Change) as Anthony, it is directed by Terry Johnson, whose recent work includes Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Rain Man and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Musical direction is by Gareth Valentine, one of the West End's premier musical directors, who has worked on such hits as Wicked and Trevor Nunn's Porgy and Bess, and who was the composer of Aladdin with Ian McKellen at the Old Vic and musical adviser for Channel 4's Musicality.

End of the Rainbow is first in the Addicted to You season - three contemporary plays that explore the various forms of addiction that define today's world. The subsequent play will be My Zinc Bed by David Hare, directed by the theatre's artistic director Laurie Sansom, who recently directed the critically acclaimed Spring Storm and Beyond the Horizon for the Young America Season. Completing the season is Honest by Northampton's own DC Moore and directed by Mike Bartlett, whose play c*ckstarred Ben Whishaw in a sell out run at the Royal Court in 2009.  

Website: www.royalandderngate.co.uk

Box Office: 01604 624811.

Individual ticket prices range from £11 to £27