The Guildhall School will be staging Damn Yankees for their annual musical production, an ever-popular event in the Guildhall School calendar that has been running since 1973.
Damn Yankees won the Tony award for Best Musical and ran for 1,019 performances in its original 1955 Broadway Production. It is an enthralling modern retelling of the Faust legend, set in the 1950s, a time when the New York Yankees dominated Major League Baseball. This comic musical maps the fate of Joe Boyd, a middle-aged fan of the ailing Washington Senators baseball team, who sells his soul to the Devil for a chance to play for his favourite team. Damn Yankees has a truly marvellous score featuring favourites such as ‘Goodbye Old Girl', ‘You've Got to Have Heart', and of course ‘Whatever Lola Wants'.
An enthralling modern retelling of the Faust legend
The director Martin Connor’s first professional experience was with Sir Ian McKellen's Actors’ Company, which he helped to run for four years. His many productions include the West End revival of Wonderful Town, starring Maureen Lipman and the revival of Iolanthe, which played at the Savoy Theatre. Martin's international productions include an Australian tour of HMS Pinafore in the USA, Gershwin’s Oh, Kay! at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, Victor Herbert’s operetta Babes in Toyland at Houston Grand Opera in Texas and a tour of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical version of Cinderella in Japan.
The Guildhall School also welcome leading West End choreographer Bill Deamer, who will be the choreographer for Damn Yankees. Recently Bill worked on The English Shakespeare Company's critically acclaimed production of The Boy Friend at The Regents Park Open-air Theatre. Other work includes choreography for the National Tour of Anything Goes and Co Direction and musical staging for the 30th Anniversary concert of Side by Side By Sondheim at The Novello Theatre. Bill also choreographed HMS Pinafore at The Regents Park Open-air Theatre, which was nominated for an Olivier award for Outstanding Musical Production in 2006.
30 June – 8 July 2009
Silk Street Theatre, Guildhall School
www.gsmd.ac.uk
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