Based on her personal experiences of living with and succumbing to cancer, Anat Gov’s musical play Happy Ending tackles difficult life choices, presenting with sincerity and matter-of-fact humour the treatment of illness in all its highs, lows, dignities and absurdities. Translated from Hebrew, adapted by Hilla Bar and with music by composers Shlomi Shaban and Michal Solomon, this UK premiere directed by Guy Retallack at London’s Arcola Theatre (28 January to 7 March 2015) is about the nature of courage, the role of treatment and the choices that we didn’t know we could make, touching all aspects of living with illness and teaching that the question isn’t ‘to be or not to be’, it’s how to be.
Carrie Evans, a theatre star in her late forties, arrives at an Oncology clinic to begin a series of treatments to prolong her life. From her interactions with doctors and talking to other patients who will try anything from drugs with unpronounceable names to horse’s milk to cannabis smoking, she finally reaches liberation in her realisation that there is always a choice.
Israeli playwright Anat Gov died from cancer aged 58 in 2012, four years after she was diagnosed with the disease. Happy Ending won the Nissim Aloni award for Original Writing in 2011 and the Gottlieb and Hannah Rosenblum Performing Arts Award in 2012.
Retallack’s previous credits include musicals Thrill Me (Tristan Bates Theatre and Charing Cross Theatre) and The Last Session (Tristan Bates Theatre), both of which were nominated for WhatsOnStage Awards. He recently directed Macbeth at Bridge House Theatre (nominated for two Offies and two Broadway World Awards including Best Director), where he is co-artistic director alongside his wife, Rachel Tucker.
Guy Retallack said: “It’s a deeply moving play, written with acuity and wit that is unique in its treatment of a subject most of us would rather not talk about. It goes through a whole range of emotions and is frequently savagely funny. Above all the play, often in the most surprising way, challenges our perceptions about what is acceptable, and seeks to make us think again about the choices we think lie before us.”
Choreographer Paul Harris is best known for Catherine Zeta-Jones’ laser scenes in Entrapment and for the wand combat sequences in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. For theatre, he’s worked as choreographer and movement director on shows including The Entertainer and Gaslight (Old Vic), Liberty (Shakespeare’s Globe) and The Importance of Being Ernest (Theatre Royal Bath). He won the Carl Alan Award for choreography in 2008.
Composer Shlomi Shaban was born in Israel, where he is a recording and performance artist. He’s just released his fourth album. Michal Solomon is composer and musical director from New York. She won the first prize of the BACA competition in New York, and was a finalist at the Oberlin International Piano Competition in Ohio. The shows she has performed with in New York include A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd and Chicago.
The cast includes Gillian Kirkpatrick, whose recent productions include American Psycho at the Almeida Theatre, Chess at the Union Theatre, and Sweeney Todd at the Adelphi Theatre, where she played the Beggar Woman. Also in the cast are Beverly Klein (original London cast of Les Misérables, the Witch in the Royal Opera House’s Into the Woods) and Jodie Jacobs, whose West End credits include Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors, Serena in Fame and Joanne in Rent. Other cast members announced so far are Thea Beyleveld, Andrea Miller, Oliver Stoney and Gemma Wardle.
Also in the creative team are musical director Tom Turner, designer Simone Romaniuk, lighting designer Richard Williamson and sound designer David Glover. Happy Ending is produced by Daniel Krupnik.
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