Cast Announced for IDENTICAL, New Musical Adaptation of THE PARENT TRAP Novel
It will open at Nottingham Playhouse 26 July – 14 August 2022, then transfer to Salford’s The Lowry 19 August – 3 September 2022.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Mar. 17, 2022
After a five-year casting search and multiple auditions across the UK, three sets of talented identical twins are about to become Britain's latest musical theatre stars.
They say you should never work with children or animals but this summer Olivier and Tony award-winning director Trevor Nunn will be doing both, with three sets of identical twins! Kyla and Nicole Fox, aged 12, from County Armagh, Northern Ireland, Emme and Eden Patrick, 12 from Waltham Abbey and Sienna and Savannah Robinson, 12 from Bromley, are the youngsters playing Lottie and Lisa in the world premiere of Identical, a new musical destined for the West End.
Identical is based on the novel 'The Parent Trap' by Erich Kästner, which inspired hugely successful Disney films featuring Hayley Mills in 1961 and Lindsay Lohan in 1998.
It will open at Nottingham Playhouse 26 July - 14 August 2022, then transfer to Salford's The Lowry 19 August - 3 September 2022. Future dates will be announced.
Identical tells the story of Lottie and Lisa, twin girls separated at birth, reunited by chance at a summer camp 10 years later. In an attempt to re-join their divorced parents, they decide to swap identities.
It has Music and Lyrics by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, (the multi award-winning writers of the Olivier award-winnig National Theatre hit 'Honk!', who also created a new score for the international smash-hit Cameron Mackintosh/Disney production of 'Mary Poppins') with a Book by Stuart Paterson.
Identical is co-produced by Nottingham Playhouse and Kenny Wax Ltd (producer of the new global musical phenomenon 'SIX' and the 'Goes Wrong' shows) and directed by Olivier and Tony award-winning Trevor Nunn (responsible for some of the greatest hits in the world, including 'Les Miserables', 'Starlight Express', 'Cats' and 'Sunset Boulevard').
Producer Kenny Wax says: "Identical is a story about the reuniting of twins separated shortly after birth and the healing of a family which has been fractured. The narrative offers a powerful message for the world right now and under the directorial genius of Trevor Nunn, I have no doubt that Identical will be regarded as one of the great musicals of its generation.....providing that we can consistently cast incredibly talented identical twins!"
Nottingham Playhouse's Executive Director Stephanie Sirr commented: "We can't wait to create this show. It's particularly exciting to give kids from our community the chance to work alongside world class professionals and to take part in the premiere of a newly commissioned musical."
Stiles and Drewe said: "It's been a delight to adapt Erich Kästner's hauntingly beautiful and timeless tale of two identical twins separated as babies, and their wily determination to stitch their family back together. It's a story packed with wonderful humour and characters which makes it a great canvas to become a musical and retell for a 21st-century audience."
It has Music and Lyrics by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, (the multi award-winning writers of the Olivier award-winnig National Theatre hit 'Honk!', who also created a new score for the international smash-hit Cameron Mackintosh/Disney production of 'Mary Poppins') with a Book by Stuart Paterson.
Identical is co-produced by Nottingham Playhouse and Kenny Wax Ltd (producer of the new global musical phenomenon 'SIX' and the 'Goes Wrong' shows) and directed by Olivier and Tony award-winning Trevor Nunn (responsible for some of the greatest hits in the world, including 'Les Miserables', 'Starlight Express', 'Cats' and 'Sunset Boulevard').
Producer Kenny Wax says: "Identical is a story about the reuniting of twins separated shortly after birth and the healing of a family which has been fractured. The narrative offers a powerful message for the world right now and under the directorial genius of Trevor Nunn, I have no doubt that Identical will be regarded as one of the great musicals of its generation.....providing that we can consistently cast incredibly talented identical twins!"
Nottingham Playhouse's Executive Director Stephanie Sirr commented: "We can't wait to create this show. It's particularly exciting to give kids from our community the chance to work alongside world class professionals and to take part in the premiere of a newly commissioned musical."
Stiles and Drewe said: "It's been a delight to adapt Erich Kästner's hauntingly beautiful and timeless tale of two identical twins separated as babies, and their wily determination to stitch their family back together. It's a story packed with wonderful humour and characters which makes it a great canvas to become a musical and retell for a 21st-century audience."
CREATIVE TEAM
Director Trevor Nunn
Choreographer Matt Cole
Set Design Rob Jones
Costume Design Jonathan Lipman
Video Design Douglas O'Connell
Lighting Design Johanna Town
Sound Design Paul Gatehouse
Musical Supervisor Caroline Humphris
Musical Director Tamara Saringer
Orchestrator Tom Curran
Associate Director (with special responsibility for the children) Martha Geelan
Casting Director Anne Vosser
Children's Casting and Administration Jo Hawes
Wig and Hair Designer Richard Mawbey
Production Manager Digby Robinson
General Management & Marketing Kenny Wax Ltd
STILES AND DREWE are a multi award-winning musical theatre writing partnership. Their scores include the international smash-hit Cameron Mackintosh/Disney production of MARY POPPINS, the Olivier Award-winning HONK!, and the recent West End productions of HALF A SIXPENCE and THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS. Their other shows are SOHO CINDERS, BETTY BLUE EYES, TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT, PETER PAN - A MUSICAL ADVENTURE, GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE BEARS, THE THREE BILLY GOATS GRUFF, THE THREE LITTLE PIGS, JUST SO and TUTANKHAMEN. Current projects include BECOMING NANCY, which premieres this autumn at the Alliance Theatre, Atlanta ahead of Broadway. They recognise new musical theatre writing via the annual Stiles and Drewe Prize for Best New Song, now in its 13th year, and their Mentorship Award supported by Music Theatre International (Europe).
STUART PATERSON is a Scottish playwright with a significant and wide-ranging body of work. He has had particular success as a family theatre writer with titles including THE JUNGLE BOOK, CINDERELLA, PETER PAN and MERLIN THE MAGNIFICENT which were first produced at The Glasgow Citizens Theatre, The Edinburgh Lyceum Theatre and Birmingham Repertory Theatre and have since been staged throughout the UK and worldwide, most recently in the USA, Finland, Holland, Sweden and by Den Nationale Scene in Norway, and by Theater Der Jugend in Vienna. His versions of HANSEL & GRETEL and Michael Morpurgo's KENSUKE'S KINGDOM were both nominated for the TMA Best Children's Production of the Year Award.
Trevor Nunn was the Artistic Director of the RSC for 18 years, directing much of the Shakespeare canon (including Macbeth with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench) and new works including Nicholas Nickleby and Les Miserables (now the longest running musical in the world). He was later Director of The National Theatre, where award-winning productions included The Merchant of Venice, Summerfolk, Oklahoma! and A Streetcar Named Desire. He has directed the world premieres of Tom Stoppard's Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia Trilogy and Rock n Roll; and of Cats, Starlight Express, Aspects of Love, Sunset Boulevard and The Woman in White by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Other West End theatre includes Hamlet, Richard II, Inherit the Wind and Kiss Me Kate (Old Vic), A Little Night Music, Flare Path, The Tempest, Love in Idleness, The Bridges of Madison County and most recently Fiddler on the Roof. Work for television includes Antony and Cleopatra (BAFTA Award), The Comedy of Errors, Macbeth, Three Sisters, Othello, King Lear and The Merchant of Venice, as well as Porgy and Bess, and the Emmy Award winning Oklahoma! He also directed the films Hedda (Oscar nominated for Best Actress), Lady Jane, Twelfth Night, Red Joan and Pale Sister. With his 2016 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, he has now directed all 37 of Shakespeare's plays.
Kenny Wax has just finished a three-and-a-half-year term as President of the Society of London Theatre (SOLT) - the trade organisation for the West End Theatre industry - a role he has fulfilled while running his own successful production company for the past 25 years. He is one of the most prolific of a younger generation of producers and during the Christmas of 2019 he had five productions running concurrently in the West End.
Notable productions include his 2013 world première of Top Hat, which won three Olivier Awards including 'Best New Musical'. In 1995 he produced Once on This Island, which also won the same award. In 2020, his production of The Worst Witch won the Laurence Olivier Award for 'Best Family Show' and his production of Julia Donaldson's much-loved book What the Ladybird Heard was nominated in the same category for this year's ceremony.
Kenny is renowned for producing some of the best family theatre both in the West End and on tour. Productions include We're Going on a Bear Hunt, Oi Frog & Friends! (touring the UK in 2022) and the Olivier Award nominated stage adaptation of Jacqueline Wilson's Hetty Feather. Kenny has also collaborated with New Vic Theatre Stoke, to produce the beautiful 80 Days Around The World and soon to be on stage, Tom, Dick & Harry - telling the story of the Great Escape.
His current success is SIX which, at the time of the lockdown, had run for four sold out weeks on Broadway prior to its official opening night and was enjoying sold out runs in the West End and on a UK tour. It was running on two cruise ships and was about to reopen in Chicago. He is thrilled that the show has reopened in the West End and, after a long wait, SIX finally opened on Broadway in September 2021. Soon the show will begin two tours across America, with an international tour also in the works.
Kenny has so far produced six shows with Mischief Theatre: including The Play That Goes Wrong (winner of the Olivier Award for 'Best New Comedy'), which reopened in the West End at the Duchess Theatre last summer and will be touring the UK from April; Peter Pan Goes Wrong has played the West End twice; The Comedy About A Bank Robbery ran for nearly four years at the Criterion Theatre; Mischief Movie Night gained Mischief their fourth consecutive Olivier nomination and was streamed for the first time all over the world in December 2020; Groan Ups played at the Vaudeville in autumn 2019 and then toured the UK until Spring 2022; Magic Goes Wrong was made in collaboration with notorious magicians Penn & Teller and is currently touring the UK after a wonderful run at the Apollo Theatre. Recently, Kenny set up Mischief Screen with Mischief Theatre, having been the Executive Producer of two Christmas television specials on BBC 1: Peter Pan Goes Wrong and A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong. In Spring 2020, Mischief hit the airwaves again with a comedy series commissioned by BBC1, The Goes Wrong Show, now available on DVD and to stream. The second series aired in the autumn and is available on iPlayer.
The new pop musical Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World, based on the book of the same name by Kate Pankhurst, will be touring the UK in Spring 2022 prior to a summer season at Theatre Royal Stratford East from 15 June.
ERICH KÄSTNER (23 February 1899 - 29 July 1974) was a German author, poet, screenwriter and satirist. He was a pacifist who wrote for children because he believed in empowering them. He was interrogated by the Gestapo several times during the war and under the personal instruction of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis burned his books as 'contrary to the German spirit' in May 1933 - an act of vandalism which he watched first hand. He is perhaps best known for his children's books Emil and the Detectives which sold two million copies in Germany alone as well as being translated into 59 languages and Lottie and Lisa (now published under the title The Parent Trap). He received the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1960 for his autobiography Als ich ein kleiner Junge war which started with a lament for Dresden, the city where he was born and which was totally destroyed by the allied bombings. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.
STUART PATERSON is a Scottish playwright with a significant and wide-ranging body of work. He has had particular success as a family theatre writer with titles including THE JUNGLE BOOK, CINDERELLA, PETER PAN and MERLIN THE MAGNIFICENT which were first produced at The Glasgow Citizens Theatre, The Edinburgh Lyceum Theatre and Birmingham Repertory Theatre and have since been staged throughout the UK and worldwide, most recently in the USA, Finland, Holland, Sweden and by Den Nationale Scene in Norway, and by Theater Der Jugend in Vienna. His versions of HANSEL & GRETEL and Michael Morpurgo's KENSUKE'S KINGDOM were both nominated for the TMA Best Children's Production of the Year Award.
Trevor Nunn was the Artistic Director of the RSC for 18 years, directing much of the Shakespeare canon (including Macbeth with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench) and new works including Nicholas Nickleby and Les Miserables (now the longest running musical in the world). He was later Director of The National Theatre, where award-winning productions included The Merchant of Venice, Summerfolk, Oklahoma! and A Streetcar Named Desire. He has directed the world premieres of Tom Stoppard's Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia Trilogy and Rock n Roll; and of Cats, Starlight Express, Aspects of Love, Sunset Boulevard and The Woman in White by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Other West End theatre includes Hamlet, Richard II, Inherit the Wind and Kiss Me Kate (Old Vic), A Little Night Music, Flare Path, The Tempest, Love in Idleness, The Bridges of Madison County and most recently Fiddler on the Roof. Work for television includes Antony and Cleopatra (BAFTA Award), The Comedy of Errors, Macbeth, Three Sisters, Othello, King Lear and The Merchant of Venice, as well as Porgy and Bess, and the Emmy Award winning Oklahoma! He also directed the films Hedda (Oscar nominated for Best Actress), Lady Jane, Twelfth Night, Red Joan and Pale Sister. With his 2016 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, he has now directed all 37 of Shakespeare's plays.
Kenny Wax has just finished a three-and-a-half-year term as President of the Society of London Theatre (SOLT) - the trade organisation for the West End Theatre industry - a role he has fulfilled while running his own successful production company for the past 25 years. He is one of the most prolific of a younger generation of producers and during the Christmas of 2019 he had five productions running concurrently in the West End.
Notable productions include his 2013 world première of Top Hat, which won three Olivier Awards including 'Best New Musical'. In 1995 he produced Once on This Island, which also won the same award. In 2020, his production of The Worst Witch won the Laurence Olivier Award for 'Best Family Show' and his production of Julia Donaldson's much-loved book What the Ladybird Heard was nominated in the same category for this year's ceremony.
Kenny is renowned for producing some of the best family theatre both in the West End and on tour. Productions include We're Going on a Bear Hunt, Oi Frog & Friends! (touring the UK in 2022) and the Olivier Award nominated stage adaptation of Jacqueline Wilson's Hetty Feather. Kenny has also collaborated with New Vic Theatre Stoke, to produce the beautiful 80 Days Around The World and soon to be on stage, Tom, Dick & Harry - telling the story of the Great Escape.
His current success is SIX which, at the time of the lockdown, had run for four sold out weeks on Broadway prior to its official opening night and was enjoying sold out runs in the West End and on a UK tour. It was running on two cruise ships and was about to reopen in Chicago. He is thrilled that the show has reopened in the West End and, after a long wait, SIX finally opened on Broadway in September 2021. Soon the show will begin two tours across America, with an international tour also in the works.
Kenny has so far produced six shows with Mischief Theatre: including The Play That Goes Wrong (winner of the Olivier Award for 'Best New Comedy'), which reopened in the West End at the Duchess Theatre last summer and will be touring the UK from April; Peter Pan Goes Wrong has played the West End twice; The Comedy About A Bank Robbery ran for nearly four years at the Criterion Theatre; Mischief Movie Night gained Mischief their fourth consecutive Olivier nomination and was streamed for the first time all over the world in December 2020; Groan Ups played at the Vaudeville in autumn 2019 and then toured the UK until Spring 2022; Magic Goes Wrong was made in collaboration with notorious magicians Penn & Teller and is currently touring the UK after a wonderful run at the Apollo Theatre. Recently, Kenny set up Mischief Screen with Mischief Theatre, having been the Executive Producer of two Christmas television specials on BBC 1: Peter Pan Goes Wrong and A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong. In Spring 2020, Mischief hit the airwaves again with a comedy series commissioned by BBC1, The Goes Wrong Show, now available on DVD and to stream. The second series aired in the autumn and is available on iPlayer.
The new pop musical Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World, based on the book of the same name by Kate Pankhurst, will be touring the UK in Spring 2022 prior to a summer season at Theatre Royal Stratford East from 15 June.
ERICH KÄSTNER (23 February 1899 - 29 July 1974) was a German author, poet, screenwriter and satirist. He was a pacifist who wrote for children because he believed in empowering them. He was interrogated by the Gestapo several times during the war and under the personal instruction of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis burned his books as 'contrary to the German spirit' in May 1933 - an act of vandalism which he watched first hand. He is perhaps best known for his children's books Emil and the Detectives which sold two million copies in Germany alone as well as being translated into 59 languages and Lottie and Lisa (now published under the title The Parent Trap). He received the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1960 for his autobiography Als ich ein kleiner Junge war which started with a lament for Dresden, the city where he was born and which was totally destroyed by the allied bombings. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.
Nottingham Playhouse
Wellington Circus,
Nottingham NG1 5AF
Tuesday 26 July - Sunday 14 August, 2022
evenings: at 7pm
matinees: at 2.30pm
Wednesday 10 August
Thursday 4 & 11 August
Saturday 30 July, 6 & 13 August
Sunday 31 July, 7 & 14 August
ACCESS performances
Audio Described performance
Thursday 4 August, 7 pm
Saturday 6 August, 2:30 pm
BSL interpreted performance
Friday 5 August, 7 pm
Captioned Performance
Saturday 13 August, 2:30 pm
Ticket prices: from £35.00 - £10.50
age guidance: 8+
Box office: 0115 941 9419
www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk
THE LOWRY
Pier 8 The Quays,
Salford, M50 3AZ
Friday 19 August - Saturday 3 September
evenings: at 7.30pm
matinees: at 2pm
Saturday 20 & 27 August & 3 September
Sunday 21 & 28 August
Thursday 25 August & 1 September
Accessible Performances:
Saturday 27 August at 2pm
Audio Described by Caroline Burn.
Touch Tour at 1pm.
Sunday 28 August at 2pm
BSL by Emma Jane Heap
Ticket prices:
from £21.00
Box office:
0343 208 6000
www.thelowry.com
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