Richard Schiff Joins SMASH! at Menier Chocolate Factory

Richard Schiff is is set to replace Kerry Shale inJack Rosenthal's Smash! at Menier Chocolate Factory. Joining Schiff in the production are previously reported Tom Conti and Natalie Walter. The production runs March 24 to May 8. 

Smash is Jack Rosenthal's hilarious but scathing look at the journey to get a musical from page to stage, complete with a cantankerous composer, a fantasist lyricist, a neophyte female novelist turned playwright, a cocksure director and a bombastic producer.

Based on his own experience of turning his hit tv play Bar Mitzvah Boy into a (less-than-successful) musical, this is the London premiere of one of Rosenthal's wittiest and, until now, rarely seen, plays.

Schiff directed several off-Broadway plays, including Antigone in 1983 with a just-graduated Angela Bassett. In the mid-1980s Schff decided to try his hand at acting and landed several TV roles. He was seen by Steven Spielberg in an episode of the TV drama High Incident and was cast in The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). His career began an upward climb that led to his co-starring role as White House Communications Director Toby Ziegler on Aaron Sorkin's award winning television series The West Wing.

Jack Rosenthal, one of Britain's greatest TV dramatists died in 2004 leaving behind a legacy of plays, films and television series, that include some of the finest dramas ever broadcast on television. He penned acclaimed BBC dramas such as Spend, Spend, Spend; The Knowledge; Bar Mitzvah Boy and devised the popular fire-brigade saga London's Burning. He was also a regular contributor to Coronation Street.

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