Since Ken Ludwig’s Treasure Island is closing almost two months early, the Theatre Royal Haymarket has had to find a show pretty quickly to fill those seats before the arrival of Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot on 30 April. What the theatre has found is a stage version of On the Waterfront, adapted by Steven Berkoff.
Based on the 1954 Marlon Brando movie , there were talks as far back as July 2007 that the lead role would be cast through an Andrew Lloyd Webber style talent hunt, with Berkoff later suggesting that a Hollywood actor would take the role, with Mark Ruffalo and Guy Pearce being mentioned. As it happens, the play features a cast of newcomers joined by Berkoff himself and received some very favourable reviews during its pre-London run at the Nottingham Playhouse last year. Whether or not it will have similar success remains to be seen, particularly as Berkoff characteristics such as mime, slow motion and tableaux sequences feature prominently in On the Waterfront.
If the play’s regional triumph is repeated in London, then its function as a Haymarket stop gap may be the waste of what could have been a run to break the chain of early closing new work at the Haymarket. Even if it doesn’t, not even the surefire smash hit Waiting for Godot can disguise the Haymarket’s four flops in a row.
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