UK Season - 2008

Park Avenue (1946)

Sundays March 30, April 6, 13, 20, 27 at 4:00pm
Also Sunday April 27 at 7:30pm (please note that this is a change to the previously advertised performance times)
Music:Arthur Schwartz
Lyrics:Ira Gerswhin
Book:George S. Kaufman & Nunnally Johnson

The unique teaming of multi Pulitzer prize winner Kaufman (Guys And Dolls, The Man Who Came To Dinner & Of Thee I Sing - awarded Pulitzer), Johnson (Roxie Hart), Pulitzer prize winner Gershwin (Porgy & Bess & Of Thee I Sing - awarded Pulitzer) and composer Schwartz (That's Entertainment & Dancing In The Dark) led to a madcap spoof on relationships and divorce amongst the wealthy. Park Avenue almost predates Company as a musical satire based on relationships. The score features the song Don't Be A Woman If You Can.

This is the European debut of this 'lost' musical.

Park Avenue cast members from the original 1946 Broadway production - courtesy of the Ira & Leonore Gershwin Trust

Sail Away (1961)

Sundays June 15, 22, 29 & July 6, 13 at 4:00pm
Also Sundays July 6, 13 at 7:30pm (please note that this is a change to the previously advertised performance times)

Music, Lyrics & Book:Noel Coward

Coward's last fully written musical comedy, written for a Broadway audience, looks at the brash and bold American, Mimi Paragon, working as a cruise hostess on a British cruise ship. Mimi, former actress and divorcee explains, while dealing with passengers, kiddies, phrase books and a younger man, "It's part of my job to accost anyone who looks the teeniest bit lonely and make their lives living hell".

The score includes Useful (Useless) Phrases, The Passengers Always Right and the title song. Sail Away has not been seen in London since its original production.

Listen to Ian Marshall Fisher, Penny Fuller, Josh Canfield, Anna Lowe and Chris Walker on the 12 June 2008 edition of In Tune on BBC Radio 3 (18.09 till 18.34).

Penny Fuller and Henry Luxemburg in Sail Away