This October 2014, Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris opens at the Charing Cross
Theatre for a strictly limited six-week run. Directed by multi-award-winning director Andrew
Keates, the production features an all-star cast of Daniel Boys (Avenue Q, Spamalot, Love Story –
also well-known from BBC’s Any Dream Will Do, 2007), David Burt (The Merchant of Venice, The
Beggars People, Plague Over England), Eve Polycarpou (In The Heights, Mother Courage, Jacques
Brel - National Theatre, 1970s) and Gina Beck (Wicked, Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables).
Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris is a musical revue of the greatest works by one
of the most prolific, Belgian singer-songwriters of all time. This production uses the definitive
English translations of Brel’s works by Mort Shurman and Eric Blau accompanied by the
orchestral arrangements by Eric Svejcar from the 2006 Off-Broadway production (Zipper
Theater, New York City). The 2006 production was the longest running and most successful
revival of the show, nominated for several awards including the Drama Desk, Drama League,
and Outer Critics Circle.
Often haunting, sometimes funny, heart-wrenching and vividly poetic, the songs of Jacques Brel
explore the human condition through honest storytelling, with themes of joy and sorrow, love
and loss, war and peace and life and death.
Charing Cross Theatre producers Steven M Levy and Sean Sweeney said that they were
delighted to be presenting the much-lauded, updated 2006 Off-Broadway version. ‘We feel it
will have a freshness and relevance that will allow it to resonate with modern-day audiences,
much as its 1968 counterpart did with audiences of that time.’
Director Andrew Keates commented that ‘once the songs of Jacques Brel get into your head they
stay there. Not only because of the poetry of his lyrics, but because of how they speak to any of
us who have longed, loved and lost’.
