Broadway winner will be next Repertory musical

Press, 3 May 1977, Page 21

Broadway winner will be next Repertory musical

• The Canterbury Repertory Theatre Society’s end-of-year musical (and fifth major production) this year will be “Cabaret,” "a show on which critics have heaped laurels since its award-winning Broadway production in 1966, and the 1972 film version starring Liza Minnelli, which won nine Hollywood Oscars and six British Film Academy Awards, including best picture. “Cabaret” will be directed by Penny Giddens, with choreography by George Williams, both of whom were associated with the society’s last end-of-year musical, “The Boy Friend,” which was chosen as “musical of the year” by the Christchurch “Star” in its annual survey of local theatre. “Cabaret” derives from Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin stories and the John van Druten play, “I Am A Camera” (staged by Repertory in 1962). It is

the story of Sally Bowles, an American girl starring at the Kit Kat Club, a cellar cabaret in the decadent Berlin of the late twenties. Repertory’s production of “Cabaret” will open on November 24. Penny Giddens is at present preparing her production of “The Man From Taxes”, with book, music and lyrics by a Christchurch composer, Paul Gregory, for presentation by the St Joseph’s Operatic Society at the Repertory Theatre in July. Rehearsals are well under way for Repertory’s next production, “And Miss Reardon Drinks A Little,” by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Paul Zindel. The cast chosen at auditions is a splendid one, according to the director, Brian Deavoll, for this biting, touching and often wildly funny play which probes the tortured relationship of three sisters whose lives have reached a point of crisis.

The central character, Catherine Reardon (the eldest), is played by Irene Macdonald, Ceil (the married one), by June Harvest, and Anna (the youngest) by Toni Peters. Elody Rathgen plays Fleur Stein, and Grant Edgar her husband. Sylvia Buckland is Mrs Pentrano and Peter Mitchell the delivery boy. “Miss Reardon” replaces Neil Simon’s “The Gingerbread Lady,” for which rights are not available. It will be staged from June 4 to 11. Repertory’s third major production this year, from August 6 to 13, will be “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof,” by Tennessee Williams, the Pulitzer Prize winner of 1955. One of Williams’s most powerful studies of a southern family, it will be directed by Elody Rathgen. Auditions will be held on June 12. The classic thriller, “The Ghost Train” and its legend of a haunted rural railway station, by Arnold Ridley (Fraser in “Dad’s Army”) will again return to delight Repertory audiences as the fourth major production (October 1320). Its director will be Peter Blaxall, who appeared in many Repertory productions in the 1950 s and early 1960 s (including the 1956 production of “The Ghost Train”) and its now the society’s patron. Early this year, in Lon-

don, Mr Blaxall saw the highly successful revival of “The Ghost Train” at the Old Vic Theatre, with Wilfred Brambell as the stationmaster, Louise Purnell and James Villiers. Also in the year’s programme are two performances by students of Colin Alexander and Wendy de la Bere at the Repertory Theatre School. The two productions by their tutors will be presented at the theatre from August 15 to 17.