Gordon Greenberg will return to the Menier Chocolate Factory to direct a major revival of Stephen Schwartz and Joseph Stein’s The Baker’s Wife this summer.
The director of Menier’s 2017 production of Barnum, Greenberg will return to the venue fresh from his success with the critically acclaimed Huey Lewis and the News-inspired Broadway musical The Heart of Rock and Roll.
Due to begin preview performances at the prestigious London venue on 6 July ahead of an opening night on 17 July, the new production which will play a limited 10-week season up to 14 September will be the first major UK revival since the musical’s 1989 West End premiere. The production will renew the Menier Chocolate Factory’s collaboration with Schwartz following the venue’s hit 2011 production of Pippin.
The creative team for the production will also include choreographer Matt Cole, designer Paul Farnworth, lighting designer Paul Anderson, musical supervisor and orchestrator Stuart Morley and musical director Dustin Conrad.
Based on Marcel Pagnol and Jean Giono’s 1938 film, La Femme du Boulanger, The Baker’s Wife features music and lyrics by multi-award-winner Schwartz and a book by acclaimed playwright Joseph Stein.
The story of a baker and his much younger wife whose arrival in a small French village turns the place upside down, the musical was first seen on stage in the US in 1976. Trevor Nunn directed the highest-profile production to date, which premiered at the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich before transferring to London’s West End in 1989 for a brief run at the Phoenix Theatre.
Angela Thomas
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