The big question in London theatre today is: Will “Love Never Dies,” the sequel to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera” revive the composer’s faltering career?

“Phantom” was in fact his last big hit and you have to wonder if a sequel will make the grade. “Love Never Dies” opened Tuesday after a brief two weeks of previews. The official opening is tonight.
Ten years have passed since the mysterious disappearance of The Phantom from the Paris Opera House. An offer is made to Christine Daaé to come to America and perform at New York’s new world famous Coney Island.

Christine, her husband and their son, Gustave arrive in New York and soon she discovers the identity of the anonymous impresario who has lured her from France to sing.

“Love Never Dies” is filled with obsession and intrigue and The Phantom sets out to prove that truly “Love Never Dies.”
Love Never Dies stars Ramin Karimloo and Sierra Boggess, as the Phantom and Christine, Joseph Millson as Raoul, Liz Robertson as Madame Giry and Summer Strallen as Meg Giry.

The roles of Fleck, Squelch and Gangle will be played respectively by Niamh Perry, Adam Pearce and Jami Reid-Quarrell.

The cast will also include Derek Andrews, Dean Chisnall, Helen Dixon, Lucie Downer, Paul Farrell, Charlene Ford, Chris Gage, Lucy van Gasse, Celia Graham, Simon Ray Harvey, Jack Horner, Erin Anna Jameson, Pip Jordan, Jessica Kirton, Louise Madison, Janet Mooney, Colette Morrow, Tam Mutu, Ashley Nottingham, Tom Oakley, Mark Skipper, Jonathan Stewart, Tim Walton and Annette Yeo.

David Giles had a gift – to make the everyone’s work, whether it be the pictures, the action or the words – all they could be, in a soap or Shakespeare. His television projects included BBC’s The Forsyte Saga in 1967 and The First Churchills. Giles, who has died at the age of 83, directed all seven episodes of The Mayor of Casterbridge for BBC.

In the BBC Shakespeare, a grand undertaking to do every one of the plays, he drew the consecutive histories of Richard II, both parts of Henry IV and Henry V, going out in 1978-79.

Marcia Wheeler, a BBC production executive who worked with Giles from his early days, testifies to another side of his talent. “Frankly, The First Churchills [1969] was a much-hurried operation. When we went on the air we had only four of the 13 scripts, the rest had still to be written. It was a hand-to-mouth existence. But David was always clear-headed, resilient, inspiring. He kept us calm.”

Born the son of a dentist in Shipley, Yorkshire, he was educated at Shipley grammar school. Due for call-up in the final months of the second world war, he was directed instead into the mines as a Bevin Boy until peace came and he was able to transfer to the Royal Army Education Corps. He then worked as a surveyor but was already interested in the theatre, to which he was to return in middle age. He joined a semi-professional company in Bradford rather like the Questors of Ealing. He took part in the York mystery plays.

After years of success with BBC, Giles was ready to return to the theatre. He worked with the Actors’ Company formed by Ian McKellen, In Canada he directed Measure for Measure at Stratford, Ontario, and Anouilh’s Waltz of the Toreadors for the Shaw festival at Niagara on the Lake. For the West Yorkshire Playhouse he directed Smoking With Lulu, which transferred to the Soho Poly in London. One of his last productions was The Quiz, with David Bradley.

Giles entered into a civil partnership with the designer Kenneth Mellor, who survives him.

David Giles, director, born 18 October 1926, died 6 January 2010

Philip Langridge has died at the age of 70 from cancer. He was regarded as one of the finest tenors of his generation.

Born in Hawkhurst, Kent, Langridge did not come from a musical family, but was encouraged at school as both a singer and a violinist. It was in the role of violinist that he entered the Royal Academy of Music in London, though he also had the opportunity there of studying singing with Bruce Boyce. He went on to have a magnificent singing career.

He was married to Ann Murray, the Irish mezzo-soprano, and she survives him. They had a son, Jonathan together. He is also survived by three adult children from a previous marriage. His two daughters Anita and Jennifer became musicians, while his son Stephen directed him on several occasions, starting in 1992 with an adaptation by Daryl Runswick of Leopold Lewis’s Victorian melodrama The Bells, at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, west London: Langridge Sr said it was like having a singing role in a Hitchcock movie.

Later collaborations with Stephen included The Turn of the Screw in the Netherlands (2006), The Minotaur at Covent Garden (2008) and Offenbach’s Barbe-bleue at Grange Park (2008). For the last of these, he played the role of Bluebeard as a soigné, dinner-suited James Bond character, taking to the operetta stage as though to the manner born.

His last role was as the Witch in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel – a priceless drag characterisation in Richard Jones’s production at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, into which he threw himself with typical abandon. It was poignantly at the end of the Met run, during which he was quoted as saying, “I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun in my whole career,” that his final illness manifested itself.

It is for that total commitment to the theatrical element of the operatic stage, as well his towering readings of a wide range of roles, that he will be remembered with both respect and fondness.

Philip Gordon Langridge, tenor, born 16 December 1939; died 5 March 2010

The satirical musical “Oh What a Lovely War” opens tomorrow night at the Newcastle. After leaving London, it will be on tour. The play marks the entertaining ride through the ironies and tragedies of the First World War.

A madcap orchestra of musicians, dancers, singers and clowns will come armed with sketches, songs and stories for your entertainment. Sombre buffoonery and musical ingenuity collides with the bawdy, tough humour of the squaddies on the front line to take you on an incredible journey across Europe. From the misplaced optimism of the British home front to the blood-soaked fields of Flanders the story is told through a fantastic collection of irreverent and poignant songs including well known favourites ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’, ‘Keep The Home Fires Burning’ and ‘It’s A Long Way To Tipperary’.

Created in 1963 by the maverick director Joan Littlewood and her revolutionary company Theatre Workshop, Oh What A Lovely War is a truly original portrait of the conflict that changed the shape of our world for ever. Fun-filled storytelling with a tough, dark heart.

Cast includes: Joanna Croll, Victoria Elliott, Helen Embleton, Karen Fisher-Pollard, Robert Hands, Gary Kitching, Tarek Merchant, Sam O’Mahoney-Adams, Thomas Padden, Christopher Price, Theone Rashleigh, Jon Trenchard.

“A Good Night Out in the Valleys” opens tonight at the Brentwood Miner’s Institute in Gwent tonight.
It is based on real Valleys stories with plenty of laughs and will feature live music performed by bands from each institute’s local area.
In the day, the coal mines had thriving communities and quite a bit of wealth in the South Wales valleys. The people in those communities were full of a sense of pride and spirit, hence, the creation of the miners’ institutes. They took a penny from every pound they earned as miners and built institutes which became their theatres, meeting places and snooker halls.
The cast includes Sharon Morgan, winner of last year’s BAFTA Cymru Best Actress Award for her role in Martha Jac a Sianco, who also appeared in BBC Wales’ Torchwood and Belonging. Boyd Clack, star of BBC Wales’ High Hopes and Satellite City, as well as Twin Town, will also appear, alongside Siwan Morris, star of Channel 4’s Skins and who last year performed in Sherman Cymru’s acclaimed Cloakroom. Siwan has also appeared on television in Con Passionate and Caerdydd.

Three young actors from BBC Wales’ Belonging will also appear: Oliver Wood ( who played Asbo), Huw Rhys (Carl), and Amy Starling (Nurse Spencer). Huw also appeared in Caerdydd.

A Good Night Out in the Valleys is written by Alan Harris, originally from Church Village, Pontypridd. His play The Gold Farmer will be performed on BBC Radio 3 on Saturday 6th February.

The play is directed by National Theatre Wales Artistic Director John McGrath, previously Artistic Director of Contact Theatre, Manchester. John trained in New York, where he was also Associate Director of Mabou Mines. In 2005, he was awarded the NESTA Cultural Leadership Award.

Administrators have been called in to the Exeter’s Northcott theatre, after trustees were told it was insolvent.

According to chairman Geoff Myers, they had “no choice” when presented with the latest financial information last week. “We took this decision with a heavy heart,” he added.

It is the latest setback for the Devon theatre, which most felt had put its troubles behind it. In December 2007, soon after being extensively refurbished, Exeter was threatened with having its Arts Council funding cut because its audience was too narrow, but got a reprieve at the last minute and was thought to be doing well, both artistically and at the box office.

Now it seems the problem could be poor accounting.

A spokeswoman for Arts Council England said the organisation felt the decision to bring in administrators premature.”We have been working with the new management over the last two years to broaden the theatre’s programming and increase its audiences,” she said.

“Despite this hard work, a legacy of financial problems has recently come to light. The Arts Council has been working with the Northcott’s new management to understand the extent of these problems, but this work is not yet complete.”

The Northcott, an old stamping ground of National Theatre director Nicholas Hytner, is one of a small number of regional theatres which have hit hard times in recent years.

Going into administration does not necessarily mean the end. The Bristol Old Vic and Derby Playhouse have both reopened after going dark. However, it does pose challenges.

In a statement, the culture secretary said: “Arts Council England is working urgently with the theatre and administrator to secure the current programme and the long-term future of the theatre at the Northcott.”

Barbara Bray, a champion of European literature has died at age 85. She was an important link between British and French literature in the 20th century. She was the principal translator and an early champion of Marguerite Duras, who was her close friend, and also translated the work of Jean Genet, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Anouilh. She was a personal friend and confidant to Samuel Beckett, the Irish playwright for more than 30 years.

Barbara Bray was an identical twin, born into a lower middle class family in west London and raised in Harrow. She went to Girton College, Cambridge and took a first in English. She married Australian-born John Bray after they both graduated. She spent three years with him teaching English in Cairo before returning to London where she got a job as script editor in the drama department of the new BBC Third Programme.

She worked with Val Gielgud, Donald McWhinnie and John Morris where she was at the spearhead of a risky enterprise to introduce the postwar British public to avant-garde 20th-century drama.
Strikingly beautiful, opinionated and headstrong, Bray had run the course of her career at the BBC by 1961. At the age of 36, she moved to Paris with her daughters, partly to be closer to Beckett (who was 55) and partly to pursue a freelance career as a translator and critic.

Bray and Beckett met in 1956, during the production of his radio play All That Fall. She helped him then with Embers and they became more closely involved, however, Bray was in a relationship with McWhinnie after her estranged husband died and she was a single mother with two young daughters.

Later, she revealed it to 30 seconds to fall in love with Beckett, but she kept her distance and it was he who made the first moves in this important relationship which lasted until Beckett died.
He sent her his works in progress and worked with her and used her as a sounding board and translator. She was the only person with whom he shared his work in progress. His 713 letters to her are kept at Trinity College Dublin (he destroyed all personal correspondence he received).

Besides writing for the Observer and appearing regularly on the BBC programme The Critics, she translated almost all of Duras’s work; Anouilh’s Antigone; Pinget’s Clope; Genet’s Prisoner of Love; Michel Tournier’s The Ogre; works by Julia Kristeva, Philippe Sollers, Michel Quint, Frédéric Richaud and Amin Maalouf; Flaubert’s correspondence with George Sand; and Elisabeth Roudinesco’s biography of Jacques Lacan. She won the Scott Moncrieff prize for translation four times.

A stroke in 2003 limited her activity, and left her using a wheelchair. She remained determinedly independent in a studio flat in the Rue Séguier, proudly reciting Shakespeare, Donne and the King James Bible from memory. After a continued decline in her health, she moved last December to Edinburgh to a nursing home near her daughter Francesca’s house.

Rational and atheist to the last, Bray eschewed a funeral and donated her body to science. She is survived by Francesca and her other daughter, Julia, and her sister, Olive. Barbara Bray, editor and translator, born 24 November 1924; died 25 February 2010

It has been a while since he was involved in British theatre, but Julian More will be remember for the book and lyrics of three of the biggest musical comedy shows of the 1950s, Irma La Douce, Expresso Bongo and Grab Me a Gondola.

Songbook was his last West End success, written with composer Monty Norman. Songbook opened at the Globe theatre in 1979 and ran for six months, earning the Evening Standard award for best musical.

More attended Trinity College, Cambridge, where he performed with the Footlights and wrote Puss in Red Riding Breeches, though not X-rated, but a pantomime for adults, which played at the Watergate theatre in 1954.

After graduation, he married Sheila and they set up housekeeping in London. More’s Grab Me a Gondola, with music by James Gilbert, opened at the Lyric two years later and ran for more than 600 performances. with Joan Heal giving a virtuoso performance as a Diana Dors-style film star at the Venice festival.

Expresso Bongo (April 1958) opened at the old Saville theatre, with a book by More and Wolf Mankowitz and lyrics by More and the composers Norman and David Heneker, starred Paul Scofield and Hy Hazell.

Irma La Douce, directed by Peter Brook, opened to rave reviews at the Lyric theatre in July 1958.

More moved to France in 1976 and became a travel writer. He is survived by Sheila, Carey and her sister Camilla, and three grandchildren. Julian Bensley More, born 15 June 1928; died 15 January 2010

Many of our old theatres look very glamorous to the audience, but according to a recent survey by the actor’s union Equity, 75 per cent of our theatres are infested with mice, rats and fleas.

The general secretary of Equity, Christine Payne, was shocked by the responses to the survey. Stage managers and actors were surveyed separately, but they all had the same responses.

One anonymous actor told of “tiny bite marks on my lipstick recently when I left the lid off.”

“Our floors have been eaten by mice,” replied another person, “and they leave their feces.”

Backstage areas are mostly clean, but some complained there was no clean area in about half the theatres for preparing the food and drink the actors must consume onstage during the show.

Equity did not give names, but the respondents work in some of the most famous theatres and long-running shows in the world, including The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Oliver! at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Billy Elliot at the Victoria Palace and Blood Brothers at the Phoenix.

According to this survey, over 600 actors and stage managers will go to work knowing they will endure at least the smell of vermin, living and decomposing, in their workplace.

Unfortunately, previous reports suggest the cost for modernizing and upgrading the buildings would run into hundreds of millions.
“We’re not underestimating the difficulty of it, or saying how it can be done,” said Martin Brown of Equity. “We’re a trade union, not rat-catchers. What we are saying is that there is no other group of workers in the world expected to go to work night after night in these conditions, and it cannot be beyond the wit of man to devise a solution.

A Inspector Calls, a Stephen Daldry production, is a classic thriller by JB Priestey and continues to wow audiences at Wyndham’s Theatre until March 13th.

Nicholas Woodeson plays Inspector Goole. He also played the role on Broadway in 1994. His recent London stage credits include Moonlight And Magnolias, The Birthday Party and Legal Fictions, not to mention his well-known role in BBCs Rome.

Woodeson is joined by David Roper, Sandra Duncan, Marianne Oldham, Robin Whiting, Timothy Watson and Diana Payne Myers.
This thriller by J B Priestey begins when the mysterious Inspector Goole arrives unexpectedly at the well-to-do Birling family home.
The family’s peaceful dinner party is shattered by the inspector’s investigations into their involvement in the death of a young woman. It emerges that each person knew the victim and exploited her in some way. The Inspector’s startling revelations shake up their lives, challenging them (and the audience) to examine their consciences.

An Inspector Calls was written at the end of the Second World War and is set before the First World War.

The cast includes Sandra Duncan, Marianne Oldham, David Roper, Elizabeth Ross, Timothy Watson, Robin Whiting and Nicholas Woodeson.

The director is Stephen Daldry.

Sister Act The Musical at the London Palladium is a show you don’t want to miss. Produced by Whoopi Goldberg, star of the blockbuster Sister Act movies, this divine musical will keep you rolling in your seat.

Sister Act features a score by eight-time Oscar winner, Alan Menken, eight-time Oscar winner. He is well-known for his many Disney movie songs, including The Little Mermaid, Alladin, Beauty and the Beast. The Sister Act musical lyrics are by Alan’s long-time collaborator, Glenn Slater.

Cheri and Bill Steinkellner, whose writing credits include the classic television comedy Cheers are the book writers. The production is directed by Peter Schneider.

Whoopi Goldberg is producing this musical version of Sister Act. She’s one of the few people has won an Academy Award, a Grammy, a Golden Globe, an Emmy and a Tony Award (as producer of the Broadway show, Thoroughly Modern Millie).

The stage is set when disco diva Deloris Van Cartier is witness to a murder and put in protective custody in a convent.

Joining the convent choir, she soon discovers they need help more than she does. Working at helping the choir and breathing new life into the neighborhood, she risks blowing her cover for good.

The production of The Cat in the Hat is a wonderful and engaging first theatre experience for 3 to 6 year olds and will be showing at the Young Vic until March 13th.

Based on the much-loved Dr. Seuss book, this legendary story was adapted for the stage by Katie Mitchell.

With his red and white striped hat and his red bow tie, the cat in the hat is full of tricks, from the moment he appears in their house. Sally and her brother know that the cat in the hat is the funniest cat they have ever met. He brings cheerful chaos to two children on a rainy day when they are left unattended.

The naughty cat does all sorts of balancing acts, including balancing the family goldfish (in his bowl) while standing on a ball, to the chagrin of the goldfish! Finally, he cleans up the mess he has made throughout the house on his way out the door, disappearing just before the mother arrives home.

Published in 1957 by Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat is still one of the best selling children’s books of all time.

Brilliantly directed by Luc Bondy, and in a new version by Divid Harrower Co, commissioned by Warwick Arts Centre, Sweet Nothings starts March 1st.

Based on Arthur Schnitzler’s play Liebelei, Sweet Nothings is about the power of sexual longing and the vulnerability of those in love.
A young man having an affair with a married woman is terrified the husband will find out and challenge him to a duel. He flirts with a girl at a party who believes he truly loves her. Life looks good until the husband enters the room.

Cast includes Hayley Carmichael (Told By An Idiot), Natalie Dormer (Anne Boleyn, The Tudors), Tom Hughes (upcoming films Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and Cemetery Junction), Jack Laskey (As You Like It, The Globe), David Sibley (Cruel and Tender at Young Vic) and Andrew Wincott (The Archers).

Arthur Schnitzler said: “I write of love and death. What other subjects are there?”

A contemporary of Freud, Schnitzler was the chronicler of Vienna 1900. La Ronde still creates scandal, while Dream Story was the basis for Kubrick’s mesmerising Eyes Wide Shut.

David Harrower’s many plays include the Olivier Award-winning Blackbird.

Kim Cattrall, well-known for her role in Sex and the City as Samantha Jones has returned to London to star with Matthew Macfadyen in Noel Coward’s comedy, Private Lives.

They play Amanda and Elyot, respectively, a divorced couple who meet again five years after divorcing and when both are on their honeymoons with new spouses. The spark is rekindled in the south of France, thanks to adjoining hotel balconies and immediately their feelings for one another are rekindled, without a care for their new partners or what drove them apart in the first place.

Cattrall was born in Liverpool and has expressed her love of London theatre and appared in Whose Life is it Anyway? And also started in David Mamet’s The Cryptogram at the Donmar in 2006.

Matthew Macfadyen is remember for his role as Tom Quinn in the BBC series Spooks. He also appeared on the London stage in The Pain and the Itch and Henry IV Part 1&2.

Directed by Richard Eyre, this Noel Coward comedy, opened last night at the Vaudeville Theatre.

Resolutely American The Little Dog Laughed deftly satirises Hollywood’s eternal hypocrisy about sex, even today, as the play reminds us there are still no openly gay leading men in Tinseltown.
Diane is a top Hollywood agent who wants to make a movie of a hit New York play about male lovers. She wants to help her fast-rising client, the discreetly gay Mitchell, and wants him to star in it. To accomplish her aims, this female Machiavel has to pull off two tricks: coerce the writer into turning his play into a hetero romance; and keep the sexual preferences of her client, who has fallen for a bisexual rent boy, under wraps. How Diane manages to complete her scheme and cash in, while preventing her client coming out, motors the plot.
Carter Beane’s play is both funny and perceptive about Hollywood’s contempt for wordsmiths and their sexual double standards.Mitchell’s argument that in America only “upper middle-class, straight, conservative men” can be what they want is, in the age of Oprah and Obama, open to all sorts of objections.
Rupert Friend as her smitten client, Harry Lloyd as his boyish lover, and Gemma Arterton as the latter’s disposable squeeze all offer good complementary support, and Jamie Lloyd’s production is smooth as butter.
The play may be too showbizzy for some tastes but, behind its Manhattan waspishness, lurks a general truth: while Hollywood may be the global dream-factory, it still lies about its operatives’ sex-lives.

The theatre sector is concerned, and rightly so, about what might happen to central government support for the arts after the forthcoming general election. If the Tories will, can they be trusted? Will the scale of the public deficit mean the Labours will have to start taking back the grants offered during 13 years in their charge?
We can’t say, of course, but it seems what people are assuming is that whatever happens will have an impact on the entire theatre sector. It will have a huge effect on a specific part of the sector, flagship venues, for one. However, for much of the theatre people enjoy in this country, it will have little or no impact at all.
We should be concerned that ACE might have its share of the funding cut, but we should also be concerned about the future of support at the grassroots, which, is where much of the country consumes its live entertainment. Most of the UKs civic theatres and arts festivals are council-funded and local authorities have been big players in the golden age of regional theatre. The new Curve in Leicester was mainly supported by the city council as is Manchester’s biennial International Festival.
Now, local authorities account for less than half of the roughly £450m in annual exchange funding, whereas they used to be an almost equal funder with the Arts Council.
If we don’t want that figure to slip even more, we need to pay attention to the danger. Because of its disparate nature, it is harder to monitor cuts to local council arts funding and how they affect the overall health of the sector. But that doesn’t mean that they are any less damaging to the industry. It’s vital they are prevented.

With its emphasis on political corruption Shakespeare’s complex comedy is very much a play for today. Michael Attenborough’s modern-dress production is clear, coherent and very good on individual psychology, although it doesn’t pursue the contemporary resonances as rigorously as recent versions.

It does suggest a strong symbiotic connection between Angelo and Isabella, who are both seen as flawed moral extremists. As Angelo, the puritanical deputy assigned to clean up Vienna, Rory Kinnear is outstanding. He first seems a shy bureaucrat astonished by his promotion. Once installed, he visibly grows in authority and then finds himself stunned when Isabella comes to plead for her brother’s life. Where most Angelos are propelled by lust, Kinnear’s is smitten by love. He sighs that Isabella may see him “at any time” and studiously swaps his specs for contact lenses to make a good impression. This doesn’t excuse the sexual bargain he suggests, but it does suggest that Angelo is a man floundering in unfamiliar emotional territory.

He is attracted to Anna Maxwell Martin’s excellent Isabella because of her single-minded moral purity. It is easy for the character to seem a prig in her refusal to exchange her virginity for her brother’s survival.

She is played as a mirror-image of Angelo – a fierce absolutist forced to wake up to new experience. Her cry of “more than our brother is our chastity” is delivered as a plea to heaven rather than a ringing assertion. She also agrees to the notorious bed trick with a haste born of innocence. And, in the final act, after she has sued for mercy for the fallen Angelo, they stare at each other as if realising theirs would be a natural union.

This is one of those theatre experiences that requires the audience to make an effort. Turning up for this site-specific show which is played out over two floor of an old motorcycle showroom could disappoint you if you don’t make the effort.

There are some traditional elements to this ¬promenade piece inspired by a true-life murder that took place in Bristol in 1836, leading to the closure of the 600-year-old St James’s Fair, drawing cleverly on the 19th-century love of melodrama to tell a tale of obsession, betrayal and murder. But it’s a clever mix, too, of signs, symbols and sideshows, and the audience has to put in some work to connect the webs of deceit as the ¬marriage of showman and actor Charles Bartlett and his pregnant wife, Emily, comes ¬under strain as Charles turns his ¬attentions to Rosie.

The marvelous thing about this show is that it feels embedded in its surroundings and draws on the work of local artists. There are shadow puppet sideshows, icy trees dangling tarot cards and foetuses, opportunities for the audience to audition to be Charles’s new leading lady, and wandering tricksters.

It may not be completely memorable, and it can feel undertextured and overcrowded, but this is ambitious and imaginative work that only requires more depth and consistency to make it soar. The best bits – including a wonderful, fragile sideshow scene in which a man voices a litany of regret as Rosie packs her case to leave – are genuinely thrilling.

I had assumed Simon Stephens would have reworked his short two-hander since the summer when the Traverse gave it a breakfast reading on the ­Edinburgh fringe. But here it is in a fuller but still bare-bones production for A Play, a Pie and a Pint, the lunchtime theatre season, with the same oddball charm and the same feeling that its deeper meaning is just out of grasp.

For lunchtime theatre goers, Heaven’s combination of character comedy, plot revelations and philosophical reflection suit the ­laid-back lunchtime format. Dominic Hill’s production makes a lively start to a five-play run of Traverse co-productions.

The scene is set in a departure lounge where two strangers waiting for a flight to Turin fall into a dispute over some ­litter. Kyle (Sean Scanlan), a 67-year-old former pianist is just the sort of person the younger Sean (Robert Jack) would prefer to avoid as he makes a break for freedom from his job in a North Berwick hotel.

What starts as a rather comical struggle moves into less certain territory. Behind Kyle’s fuddy-duddy appearance lies a bit of a radical – and perhaps something of the deus ex machina – although not radical enough to embrace Sean’s decision to escape his idyllic ­family life. In place of a predictable kind of heaven, the father of two has opted for the thrill of the unknown.

The unsettling comedy finds an ending of sorts in Kyle’s incongruous rendition of Heaven, the trippy ode to celestial emptiness by Talking Heads. Whether from a beauty spot or an airport, Sean is escaping from a “place where nothing ever happens”, like an artist searching for life whatever the personal cost.

Kathryn Grayson died on February 17, 2010 at age 88 at her home in Los Angeles. According to Sally Sherman, her longtime companion and secretary stated she “just went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”

Born as Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick, she appeared in 20 films, all but three for MGM – but only one, the 1952 remake of Show Boat, was a big hit. She was backed by outstanding production values and strong performances from Howard Keel and Ava Gardner. Keel became her favourite actor and her choice as co-star in Kiss Me Kate (1953), against the studio’s preference for Laurence Olivier.

Kathryn Grayson always wanted to be an opera star, and spent a modest six weeks every year practising for the Metropolitan Opera debut that never came. Many of her performances in MGM musicals were as divas (usually spoiled), giving her the chance to trill the arias denied her in real life – although she did makes appearances in several operas in the 1960s.

Beverly Sills, the soprano was a friend of Kathryns and she often visited her dressing room between acts.

She was signed by MGM on the basis of a promise. MGM was looking for another Deanna Durbin. Talent scouts and publicists were ordered on pain of dismissal to find “another Deanna Durbin”. Kathryn Grayson, 15 at the time and heard singing at a party, seemed the answer to their prayers, and she was offered a contract even without a screen test.

Though she became an MGM contract artist in 1939, it was two years before her first film. During this time, she was trained in acting techniques and in the difference between singing for the screen and the stage. Her first film was Andy Hardy’s Private Secretary (1941) – a Mickey Rooney vehicle which also featured several other studio starlets, among them Judy Garland, Esther Williams, Lana Turner and Donna Reed.

Her performance did attract favourable notices, but, MGM remained uncertain of her potential and for two years cast her only in supporting roles.

Cast opposite Gene Kelly in Thousands Cheer (1943) and Anchors Aweigh (1945), she displayed a winsome charm; but still the studio had reservations about her popular appeal. So it featured her in self-contained musical numbers in what were in effect glorified revues, designed to exploit a wide range of MGM talent.

Her last three films for MGM all co-stared Howard Keel, and contained her best work. Show Boat, Lovely to Look At (a 1952 remake of Roberta, with music by Jerome Kern) and Kiss Me Kate, the 1953 3-D version of the Cole Porter musical based on The Taming of the Shrew, were well within her vocal range.

She retired from movies and appeared only sporadically on stage and television. She had some success in concert programmes, both solo and with her old singing partner Howard Keel, but a 1960 road tour of Camelot was not well received.

Kathryn Grayson was married twice: first to John Shelton (1940-46) and secondly to the singer Johnnie Johnston (1947-51), with whom she appeared in 1949 at the London Palladium and by whom she had a daughter, Patricia, born in 1948. Both marriages ended in divorce.