Jeffrey Lane and David Yazbeck's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, a musical adaptation of the Spanish movie of the same name by Pedro Almodovar, which closed early on Broadway in 2011, is set to open in London. According to The Daily Mail, the tuner, starring Olivier winner Tamsin Greig, will begin previews on on December 20, with opening night set for January 12, 2015 at the Playhouse Theatre. Bartlett Sher, who directed the Great White Way incarnation, will helm the reworked, scaled down, U.K. production.
Greig won the Olivier for Much Ado About Nothing and received an Olivier nod for The Little Dog Laughed. Her screen credits include Green Wing, Black Books, Episodes and Emma.
Women on the Verge played its final performance at the Belasco Theatre on January 2, 2011. It officially opened on November 4, 2010 with a cast filled with Broadway heavyweights including Tony Award winners Patti LuPone, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Laura Benanti and Danny Burstein.
Greig won the Olivier for Much Ado About Nothing and received an Olivier nod for The Little Dog Laughed. Her screen credits include Green Wing, Black Books, Episodes and Emma.
Tamsin Greig said: "I am excited, thrilled and terrified to have been invited to collaborate with artists of the calibre of Pedro Almodóvar, Bart Sher, David Yazbek and Jeffrey Lane to perform in a musical. If it's true that you are only as good as the company you keep, then I am in very safe hands. And I feel very fortunate to have been encouraged – well, bullied – by my agent to have singing lessons, to learn new skills and to experience other creative mediums. I have also run out of excuses why I can't do it!"
Director Bartlett Sher said: “I keep returning to Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown because Pedro’s vision of the world and women, his humour and his style, seem more important now than at any time since the film premiered. It’s a joy to return to Pedro’s world.”
Pedro Almodóvar, who has been involved in the development workshops, said: "I love that my ‘Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’ resists the passing of time. Twenty-six years after having been created, they’re still alive. This time, with the very talented Bart Sher in command, they’re taking London, a city that’s always been to me the paradigm of freedom, pleasure and modernity. I wish them a long and funny stay!"
Women on the Verge played its final performance at the Belasco Theatre on January 2, 2011. It officially opened on November 4, 2010 with a cast filled with Broadway heavyweights including Tony Award winners Patti LuPone, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Laura Benanti and Danny Burstein.
The Oscar-nominated film centers on Pepa, a voice-over actress on a mission to deliver an important secret to her philandering boyfriend, Iván. A two-day chase ensues, involving Iván's mentally insane wife Lucía, who has been recently released from a mental institution and is hunting down the father of her child and his mistress for one last confrontation. The plot involves an unstable best friend, Shiite terrorists, a mambo-loving taxi driver, a hostage motorcycle driver, gazpacho laced with sleeping pills and a charred bed.
Read Baz Bamigboye original article here.
