The musical Stephen Ward opens at the Aldwych Theatre on 19th December. Picture: Getty Images
Richard Eyre will direct the world premiere of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Christopher Hampton and Don Black’s new musical Stephen Ward, previewing at London’s Aldwych Theatre from 3rd December 2013, with opening night on 19th December.
Stephen Ward has music by Lloyd Webber, with book and lyrics by playwright Hampton and lyricist Black (with whom Lloyd Webber previously collaborated on the multi Tony Award-winning Sunset Boulevard). Designs are by Rob Howell with choreography by Stephen Mear, lighting by Peter Mumford and sound by Paul Groothuis.
It’s 1963 and one scandal has totally shocked society. Stephen Ward deals with the victim of the Profumo Affair – not, as is widely supposed, John Profumo himself, the disgraced Minister for War, nor even the fatally wounded Conservative government of Harold Macmillan, but the society osteopath whose private libertarian experiments blew up in his own and everyone else’s face.
Pre-publicity material for the musical suggests that: “In a trial from which he was the only protagonist to emerge with some dignity and honour – Ward became the targeted scapegoat of a furiously self-righteous Establishment. By no means a hero, he was a reluctant martyr, thanks to an unholy alliance between press and police of a kind we can all too readily recognise today; inadvertently, he was the hinge between two worlds and the harbinger of a revolution in manners, music and morals when the ordered, stuffy, respectful universe of the fifties gave way to the classless, truculent, unstoppable sixties.”
Stephen Ward is produced by Robert Fox Limited and the Really Useful Group.
Tickets go on sale on 28th June 2013 and the musical is currently booking to 1st March 2014.
The Olivier Award-winning musical Top Hat continues at the Aldwych Theatre until 26th October.
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.