Currently starring on Broadway in Anastasia, West End and film actress Caroline O’Connor will be travelling back across the pond to star as Anna in the first London revival in 20 years of Kander and Ebb’s The Rink, having understudied the role of Angel in the 1988 London production of the show.
The new production, directed by Adam Lenson, of will play at Southwark Playhouse for a limited season from 25 May to 23 June 2018, with a national press night on 29 May. The role of Angel, along with further casting is to be announced
Anna, an Italian housewife who runs a roller-skating rink on the Eastern seaboard, is about to sell it to developers until her estranged daughter, Angel, returns after a long absence, hoping to save the rink and patch things up with her mother.
The Rink originally premiered on Broadway on 9 February 1984, starring Chita Rivera as Anna and Liza Minelli as Angel. Rivera won the Tony and Drama Desk Awards for her performance.
The show premiered in London at the Cambridge Theatre on 17 February 1988, starring Josephine Blake and Diane Langton as Anna and Angel respectively. The musical has a book by Tony Award-winning Terrence McNally (Ragtime, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Master Class).
O’Connor is perhaps best known for playing Nini in Baz Luhrmann’s Oscar-winning film Moulin Rouge as well as Velma Kelly in Chicago on Broadway and in Australia and Mabel Normand in Mack and Mabel in the West End, for which she received a 1996 Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical.
Other theatre roles include the one woman play Bombshells (Arts Theatre, London) which was written especially for her and for which she received her second Olivier Award nomination, Hildy in On the Town (London Coliseum), End of the Rainbow (Sydney Opera House) and Edith Piaf in Piaf (Melbourne and Sydney). She also played Ethel Merman in the 2004 Cole Porter biopic De-Lovely.
In this new production of The Rink choreography is by Fabian Aloise, with musical direction by Joe Bunker and casting by Jacob Sparrow. The Rink is produced by Jack Maple and Brian Zeilinger.
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