‘Thelma & Louise’ Musical World Premiere Set For London’s Younger Vic

A musical stage model of Thelma & Louise, the 1991 feminist outlaw basic written by Callie Khouri and directed by Ridley Scott, will obtain its world premiere at London’s Younger Vic Theatre within the fall.

The unique film starred Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis as two pals who take off in a inexperienced Ford Thunderbird. What begins out as a weekend fishing journey turns right into a gun-toting feminine buddy film after one of many girls is sexually assaulted.

Through the years it has been hailed as a seminal piece of cinematic artwork about feminine liberation. 

Khouri, who gained an Oscar for her unique screenplay, will write the present’s guide with music and lyrics by Neko Case, the Grammy-nominated vocalist, lyricist and composer who has carried out and revealed many songs about “girls’s rage.”

Broadway’s Journey Cullman will direct the co-production led by the Younger Vic, Sonia Friedman Productions, Blue Spruce Productions, Ley Line Leisure, Khouri and Mandy Greenfield in affiliation with MGM On Stage.

“It’s probably the most well-known road-movie and feminine friendship film of all time,” Nadia Fall, the Younger Vic’s creative director and CEO, advised Deadline an in unique interview.

“There’s one thing scared about it,” Fall declared.

In truth, Fall’s movie characteristic debut, final 12 months’s putting road-trip drama Brides, was impressed enormously by Thelma & Louise. 

“How do you flip it right into a musical? I feel it’s actually nice that Callie is writing the guide. That film’s 35 years outdated however it nonetheless feels radical, this feminist story. And if you consider America and if you consider girls’s rights and the way they’re going backwards, I simply assume, ‘God, how is that this story so rattling related and nonetheless so courageous?’.”

 Fall added that there’s a complete era “who wouldn’t have seen it.”

She let loose a tragic sigh as we mentioned how its reemergence is so well timed. Girls nonetheless endure excruciating police and authorized challenges once they go to the authorities to report a rape. They’re the victims, “however you wouldn’t realize it from the way in which they’re handled,” she lamented. 

“Sadly, it must be an outdated story of yesteryear that issues have modified, however they haven’t,” she mentioned.

Final summer season, producer Friedman assembled the crew of creatives, solid and musicians to stage a sequence of workshops on the Younger Vic’s primary stage.

Amy Lennox (Cabaret, Kinky Boots, Lazarus, Opening Evening) and Rachel Tucker (Depraved, Come From Away, Sundown Boulevard, The Nice Gatsby), each celebrated musical theater artists, have been knockout in workshops as the 2 desperados. They’ve been formally solid to play the leads within the present that runs from September 3 by way of October 24. “They’re drop-dead beautiful in it,” mentioned Fall.

In an announcement launched by way of the Younger Vic, Khouri mentioned that the newly re-imagined story is “nonetheless a wild  and emotional experience, made even higher by the big skills of Neko Case, Journey Cullman and our wonderful artistic crew.”

When requested what’s in retailer for the musical after the Younger Vic, Fall mentioned they’re merely concentrating on getting the manufacturing into theater, reasoning that “it’s superstitious to speak about what comes subsequent.” 

Nonetheless, the present has been in growth for a number of years, with involvement at one level from Amanda Seyfried and Evan Rachel Wooden in a workshop in New York.

Attending to the Younger Vic is the end result of a lot sweat and tears, though hopefully no blood was concerned.

The present’s future life will very a lot rely upon what emerges from its eight week run on the south aspect of the River Thames throughout Waterloo Bridge.

The Younger Vic’s new season additionally incudes Eurotrash, a darkly comedian story with slicing humor starring Kathryn Hunter (Poor Issues, Andor, Black Doves) and Ben Whishaw (Peter Hujar’s Day, Black Doves, Paddington). The play relies on Christian Kracht’s 2024 bestseller. It has been tailored for the stage by Colin Jeevan, who co-wrote tv film The Tank  and the Das Boot sequence.

Walter Meierjohann will direct the manufacturing to run on the Younger Vic from November 13 by way of January 9 2027. “It’s about our skeletons in a closet as folks, but in addition as nations,” was how Fall described the play.

Different reveals embody the UK premiere of La Distance by Portuguese playwright and present director of the Pageant d’Avignon, that includes unique solid Alison Dechamps and Adama Diop. It will likely be carried out in French with English surtitles  from January 22 by way of February 13 2027.

After which Debbie Tucker Inexperienced (Ear for Eye) will direct her new play Dissent, working from March 5 by way of April 24.

Fall will direct a brand new manufacturing of August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, the primary of Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle of 10 performs that explored the African American expertise set in each decade of the twentieth century. When Fall  ran the Stratford East Theatre in East London, she directed King Hedley II, the penultimate play in Wilson’s Pittsburgh canon that starred Lenny Henry and Aaron Pierre, who, by the way in which, is terrific, together with Olivia Williams, Giles Terea and Arthur Boan, in Clint Dyer’s brilliantly scorching manufacturing of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest that opened on the Outdated Vic on Wednesday evening. It stands by itself as its personal factor, simply because the movie model does.

The crew behind Thelma & Louise contains choreography by Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber, scenography by Christine Jones and Brett J. Banakis, costume design by Ryan Dawson Laight, lighting design by Natasha Chivers, sound design by Gareth Owen, musical supervision by Kimberly Grigsby, orchestration and preparations by John Clancy and musical course by Ed Bussey, with further music by Carl Newman, Paul Rigby and Zoe Sarnak. The artistic producers are Mandy Greenfield and Sonia Friedman Productions, and the artistic marketing consultant is Imogen Brodie. Stuart Burt is the casting director, Peter Noden is the casting affiliate, Kev McCurdy is the battle director, Yarit Dor is the intimacy director, and Danièle Lydon is the  voice and dialect coach.