Connie in They're Playing Our Song at the Menier

Connie Fisher makes a welcome return to the stage this week as she begins previews in the Marvin Hamlish/Carole Bayer Sager/Neil Simon musical They're Playing Our Song at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Previews of the show, which will be directed by Fiona Laird, begin on July 25 prior to an August 4 opening. The production will run till September 28.

Fisher and co-star, Alistair McGowan (whose recent West End outings have included the manic dentist Orin in The Little Shop Of Horrors and Emcee in Rufus Norris's Cabaret) will take on the roles of Sonia Walsk and Vernon Gersh originally created on Broadway by Lucie Arnaz and Robert Klein in 1979 and reprised in the premiere London staging by Gemma Craven and Tom Conti a year later.

The musical follows the personal and professional up and down relationship of a wisecracking composer and a somewhat offbeat lyricist, based loosely on the real-life relationship of Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager. Its book was penned by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of Lost In Yonkers, Neil Simon (The Odd Couple, Sweet Charity, Promises, Promises) and the show's music score is by the composer of the Pulitzer prize winning A Chorus Line, Marvin Hamlisch. 

This will be Ms. Fisher's first appearance on a London stage since her Lastminute.com People's Choice Theatre Award-winning performance as Maria in The Sound of Music. She shot to fame having landed the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein role by winning the BBC reality show How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?. Her critically acclaimed run at the Palladium lasted from November 2006 until February 2008. Since then Connie has been busy filming her first TV drama for ITV, Caught In A Trap, in which she plays a woman with an Elvis Pressley obsession. Her second solo album, From Connie With Love, is due for release this autumn.

Coincidentally Connie Fisher was brought up in Haverfordwest in south-west Wales, as was the current screen Batman and Hollywood heart-throb, Christian Bale, whose latest Caped Crusader blockbuster, The Dark Knight, has just opened to huge business in the US and UK. The silver-voiced Ms. Fisher will no doubt be hoping for similar success onstage at the Menier.

 

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