GUESS WHAT WE'RE DOING?
SEEING A PLAY IN LONDON!
From Wikepedia:
West End theatre is a common term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of "Theatreland" in and near the West End of London. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world.
Total attendances first surpassed 12 million in 2002 and then 13 million in 2007, setting a new record for the West End. In 2013 ticket sales were 14,587,276. Since the 1990s there has been an increase in the number of famous film actors on the London stage.
London has overtaken New York as the world's biggest theater capital, according to a new report by the Society of London Theatre. The average ticket price overall was £27.76 ($46.73), while the average for commercial West End theaters was £36.05 ($60.69). By contrast, the average ticket price for a Broadway show passed the $100 milestone this season, hitting $103.88.
West End attendance outstripped Broadway's by 20%.
Over 22 million people attended performances in London's 241 professional theaters. That's 40 per cent more than the 13 million who turned up at Premier League soccer matches. Both admissions and box office were up over the previous year. London's 241 theaters seat over 110,000.
On average, over 3,000 performers and 6,500 full-time staff are working in London theaters, together with over 10,000 part-time and freelance staff.
But enough details of the West End - here's what we'll be seeing:
"AMERICAN BUFFALO"
- starring Damian Lewis, John Goodman and Tom Sturridge
News re the play:
Damian Lewis, the actor who gained global fame as Brody in Homeland, is to return to the London stage in a production of David Mamet’s American Buffalo.
Damian Lewis, the actor who gained global fame as Brody in Homeland, is to return to the London stage in a production of David Mamet’s American Buffalo.
Speaking to the Evening Standard, Lewis called it “one of the great plays of the 20th century by one of the great living playwrights”. American Buffalo will be directed by Daniel Evans, with whom Lewis trained at London’s Guildhall drama school, and will open at Wyndham’s Theatre on 16 April.
It’s the first play Lewis will have appeared in since 2009, when he performed opposite Keira Knightley in Molière’s The Misanthrope, though he has a rich history on the stage: he was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company for five years in the 1990s, and appeared opposite Ralph Fiennes on Broadway for a production of Hamlet. In 2005, he performed in Five Gold Rings with Helen McCrory, who later became his wife.
American Buffalo is the blunt tale of a pair of junk-shop workers plotting to steal a valuable coin collection, and the Eton-educated Lewis admitted that the blue-collar milieu is far from his own. “It’s a big challenge, of course, but that is what is attractive about it. My experience in life is not that of these guys in the play. When I play Americans, I tend to play lower American types for whatever reason.”
John Goodman will make his West End debut playing Don Dubrow, one of three small-time crooks plotting to steal a valuable coin collection. In a statement, Goodman said: “I’m delighted to be returning to the stage … in such a fantastic project with two brilliant British actors both of whom I’ve admired for some time. David Mamet is a writer I have loved throughout my career and so I’m thrilled to be bringing his work alive on stage.”
Goodman’s previous theatre credits in the US include a 2009 production of Waiting for Godot at Studio 54 and the long-running Broadway musical Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the mid-80s.
The British actor Tom Sturridge completes the cast. After his award-winning theatre debut in Simon Stephens’s Punk Rock at the Lyric Hammersmith and Manchester’s Royal Exchange, Sturridge was nominated for a Tony for his 2013 performance on Broadway in Orphans alongside Alec Baldwin. He will also appear in the BBC’s next Hollow Crown series. Sturridge said: “I think [American Buffalo] is dangerous and delicate, funny and frightening … I can’t wait to fight to make an audience feel about it as I do.”
American Buffalo runs from 16 April to 27 June 2015 at Wyndham’s theatre.
GETTING EXCITED!!!!!
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