Following an acclaimed season at the start of the year, The Pianist Of Willesden Lane will return to the St James Theatre for a six-week season this autumn.
Running from 7 September to 16 October, the drama, which features incredible piano music played live on a Steinway concert grand piano, tells the story of a young Jewish pianist dreaming of making her concert debut in 1938 Vienna. When the Nazi regime takes its grip, she is torn from her family and set onto the Kindertransport to London.
Speaking about the St James Theatre return, performer Mona Golabek, on whose family the story is based, said: “Performing The Pianist of Willesden Lane at the St James Theatre has been the highlight of my life. I shall forever cherish the audiences that came and embraced my mother’s story with such open hearts. I am so honoured to be invited back for an encore run and can’t wait!”
When The Pianist Of Willesden Lane plays in St James Theatre’s main house, its studio will host the European premiere of hit Off-Broadway comedy Waiting For Waiting For Godot.
Directed by The Play That Goes Wrong’s Mark Bell, Dave Hanson’s Waiting For Waiting For Godot follows a pair of understudies as they occupy their time backstage with trying to understand art, life, theatre and their existence within it.
The play, described by Time Out New York as “gleefully absurd”, runs from 30 August to 24 September.
Prior to the Beckett bothering show’s European premiere, musical The Stripper plays in the studio from 7 July to 13 August.
Written by the team behind The Rocky Horror Show, Richard Hartley and Richard O’Brien, The Stripper is a musical whodunit set in the California of 1961. Investigating a woman threatening to throw herself off a fancy hotel, Lieutenant Al Wheeler finds himself thrust into the sleazy underworld of strip-joints, where the truth is not the only thing he uncovers.
This new production of O’Brien’s lesser known work is directed by Benji Sperring, who is currently directing another cult hit musical, The Toxic Avenger, at the Southwark Playhouse.