Ben Richards returns to musical theatre in the premiere of Burt Bacharach and Steven Sater’s SOME LOVERS – the headline show for Aria Entertainment’s fifth annual From Page To Stage (FPTS) Summer Festival. The musical runs for just 12 performances at The Other Palace from 24 August to 2 September 2017.
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SOME LOVERS is the new musical from Tony and Grammy Award-winning writer Steven Sater (Spring Awakening) and Academy Award, Grammy Award-winning pop legend Burt Bacharach – the latter’s first score for the theatre since 1968’s Promises Promises (revived by Aria Entertainment at London’s Southwark Playhouse earlier this year). A valentine to New York SOME LOVERS is a contemporary parable about the gifts we give one another – a love story, set over twenty years.
Four actors play two characters, Ben and Molly, caught between the present and past. Ben will be played by Ben Richards (The Bodyguard, Priscilla Queen Of The Desert – West End, Footballers’ Wives, Hollyoaks) and Molly by Gemma Wardle (Betty Blue Eyes – West End, Eponine in Les Miserables – West End), while Young Molly is Jenna Innes (Charlotte Donne in Animus – The Bridewell Theatre) and Young Ben is Aaron Kavanagh, making his professional debut after graduating this month from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Steven Sater says: “Burt and I came to recognise how distinct our love songs were from those ubiquitous pop anthems of young love. Our love songs seemed invariably to express a sort of disaffection, a disappointment, a dark joy, or the renewed determination of a more mature, mid-relationship romance. What if we revisited that Depression-Era classic story, The Gift of the Magi? What became of those young Christmas lovers, twenty years after their happily ever after? And that was the beginning of SOME LOVERS.”
Burt Bacharach says:
“Writing songs with Steven has been a different process for me because most of the time it’s the lyrics that come first and then I set them to music. Steven is a very musical lyric writer and it is always a pleasure to take his lyrics with consummate ease and set them and feel very good about the result.”
The creative team for SOME LOVERS are: Director Katherine Hare, Musical Director Jordan Li-Smith, Choreographer Philip Thomas, Designer Nik Corrall, Lighting Designer James Smith and Sound Designer Chris Bogg. Produced in association with SENBLA.
Elsewhere in the From Page to Stage festival line-up, more West End performers have been confirmed for You Know How To Love Me – A Charles Miller Celebration including: Carolyn Maitland (Ghost, Miss Saigon), Oliver Tompsett (Guys & Dolls, We Will Rock You, Wicked), Shona White (Mamma Mia, Wicked) and Miranda Wilford (Remembering Fred, Thriller Live!) in the Studio on 18 and 19 August.
From Page To Stage, a ground-breaking International Summer Musical Festival for new musicals at the start of their musical theatre life, runs for three weeks at The Other Palace from 14 August to 3 September 2017.
