Theatregoers who missed out on tickets to see Lucy Prebble’s acclaimed new play Enron, which opens its already sold out run at the Royal Court later this week, will be heartened to hear that it has confirmed a West End transfer.
The production, which premiered at Chichester earlier this year, will run at the Noël Coward theatre from 16 January 2010, holding a West End press night on 26 January, and is currently booking until 8 May.
Enron, which is staged by Rupert Goold’s Headlong theatre company, is based on the real-life events surrounding one of the most infamous scandals in financial history, and uses music, dance and video to explore 1990s capitalism and the current financial situation.
The second play by Prebble, who won the Critics’ Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright for her first, The Sugar Syndrome, Enron sold out its run at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester earlier this summer, and repeated the feat with its Royal Court run prior to opening. The mix of critical and audience acclaim has led to the Sunday Times describing it as “the most anticipated transfer of the year”.
The show’s principal cast members Samuel West, Amanda Drew, Tom Goodman-Hill and Tim Pigott-Smith all transfer with the production to the Noël Coward theatre.
Following its British success, there are also plans to take the show to Broadway next year.
Enron’s arrival at the Noël Coward theatre signals the end of Calendar Girls’s successful run at the venue. Its closure on 9 January is not the end of the West End story for the comic tale of Women’s Institute members moved to raise money for charity by posing for a nude calendar; the production is in the process of finding a new home.
Enron is the second Royal Court production in the space of one week to announce a West End transfer, following Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, which preceded Enron at the Sloane Square venue. Jerusalem, which stars Mark Rylance and Mackenzie Crook, will also play in the West End in early 2010, opening at the Apollo theatre in February.
MA