Woman in White is back — and she’s been on a diet!
STAGE director Thom southerland and actress Laura Pitt- Pulford met while they were working as ushers at the Prince edward Theatre (Mary Poppins was playing).
A stone’s throw away, at the Palace Theatre, was Andrew Lloyd Webber’s adaptation of Wilkie Collins’s gothic thriller The Woman in White — and the pair were hooked by the Victorian- era tale of love, greed and ghosts.
southerland called Lloyd Webber’s really Useful Group offices, seeking a licence to put it on.
And now, 12 years later, he is preparing to direct a new version — possibly with Pitt-Pulford playing Marian Halcombe, who lives in a mansion with her younger half- sister Laura Fairlie.
Three men come into their lives, but only one means them no harm. Lloyd Webber has given southerland and producer Patrick Gracey permission to stage the haunting drama at the Charing Cross Theatre for a 12- week run from november 20.
The impresario told me he and lyricist David Zippel were well aware that the show at the Palace wasn’t perfect. ‘As is ever the case, there were some things that could have been done better.’
He and Zippel have been tinkering with it, on and off, for about three years now, and have given southerland the ‘tidied up version’ to direct as he sees fit. ‘We’re going to let him have a free hand in doing it,’ Lloyd Webber said.
There’s a whole new theatre generation who saw the composer’s shows when they were kids, and were influenced by them. Lin Manuel-Miranda, the genius behind Hamilton, has said how much Joseph, Jesus Christ superstar, evita and Phantom inspired him.
southerland said the new Woman in White will be leaner ( cuts have been made to the music and libretto, while the problematic second act has been streamlined) and more intimate — and not just because the Charing Cross is a fraction of the size of the Palace.
‘it’s going to be small,’ southerland said of the show. ‘roughly about four people: Marian, Laura, Anne Catherick and Walter Hartright.’
‘And then you have the Count,’ he added, referring to Count Fosco, the dastardly aristocrat who charms women in harm’s way.
southerland said his Count will be young and handsome. Producer Gracey agreed: ‘There’s a reason these women fall for him.’
PLAYWRIGHT Conor McPherson has chosen 20 Bob Dylan songs for his Depression-era play Girl From The North Country (on at the Old Vic) — and the way they’re performed (and arranged by Simon Hale), it’s as if you’ve never heard them before. It’s a freewheelin’ piece that reminds me of Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion radio show. The cast is firstclass, too, including Shirley Henderson, Ciaran Hinds, Debbie Kurup, Sheila Atim, Jack Shalloo, Sam Reid, Ron Cook and Stanley Townsend.