A high-powered creative team has been assembled to bring a major new musical featuring the songs of national treasure Tom Jones to the stage.
Luke Sheppard (In The Heights), the director of the current West End smash & Juliet will take charge alongside celebrated stage and screen choreographer Arlene Phillips and award-winning set designer Jon Bausor for Tony Award-winning writer Joe DiPietro’s What’s New Pussycat? which will premiere at Leeds Playhouse in September.
Inspired by Henry Fielding’s 18th century novel The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, the show takes its title from the Oscar-nominated Burt Bacharach and Hal David song which would become the third UK chart hit for the Welsh singer whose stage name was inspired by the 1963 film version of Fielding’s work. ‘What’s New Pussycat?’ was the theme song for the eponymous 1965 film comedy which starred Peter O’Toole as an inveterate womaniser and Peter Sellers as his psychoanalyst.
US playwright DiPietro’s (Memphis The Musical) What’s New Pussycat? takes the novel widely regarded as Fielding’s greatest work and changes the setting to the swinging sixties. The production which opens in Leeds on 23 September 2020 will feature some of music’s most famous Welshman’s greatest hits including ‘Green, Green, Grass of Home’, ‘It’s Not Unusual’ and the more recent ‘Sex Bomb’ and ‘Mama Told Me Not to Come’.
Commenting on the production, Sheppard said: “Sometimes you work on a show and you know it could be really special, and our first staged reading of this piece left me flying high.
“It’s down to the amazing synergy between a fiercely witty script that takes this classic novel and casts it in a fresh and vibrant new light in the swinging 60s, and an incredible catalogue of music that has such range it can break your heart one moment and have you on the dance floor the next. It’s a joyous show with the challenges facing two young people at the centre of it, and I can’t wait to bring it to life at the beautiful newly reopened Leeds Playhouse.”
Sheppard heads a creative team that includes costume designer Gabriella Slade, music supervisor and Orchestrator Matthew Brind, lighting designer Howard Hudson, sound designer Gareth Owen and casting director Stuart Burt.
Announcing the production, Leeds Playhouse artistic director James Brining said: “This autumn sees the 50th anniversary of Leeds Playhouse and What’s New Pussycat? will be a fantastic way to kick off those celebrations. This will be a fun-filled production about love, laughter and living life to the full all to the soundtrack of Sir Tom Jones’ incredible songs. Luke Sheppard is an extraordinarily talented director and I can’t wait to welcome him to the Playhouse to create this brilliant new production.”
What’s New Pussycat? will be produced by Leeds Playhouse with Chris Harper and Flody Suarez.
Angela Thomas
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