Sunday 5th May 2013 by Will Langdale
A quick pick of what’s hot in the TicketTree.com office
Musical adaptation of The Commitments on its way!
This week, we’re extremely excited at the news of a West End adaptation of The Commitments! Roddy Doyle’s 1987 comic novel about a mismatched group of musicians attempting to start a soul music revolution in Dublin was a bestseller, with an extremely good 1991 film adaptation to boot.
The plot centres on Jimmy, a music fanatic enlisted by a couple of struggling amateur musicians to manage them. After a newspaper advert to recruit the rest of the outfit and a rename to The Commitments, the band begins to fall apart as quickly as they improve their playing in a hilarious clash of personalities, along with the bizarre twist of white working-class Dubliners performing some seriously awesome Black American music!
Speaking to The Guardian this week, Roddy Doyle revealed that the reason a musical adaptation has taken so long was a dislike of musicals. Despite 20 requests over the years to bring the show to a live audience, he only actually saw a musical once his children had grown up: "I think the first was The Producers. It was quite a revelation because the film is terrific and I was wondering why would you want to do a musical? And actually it was great, it was very funny and sharp and you forgot about the film quite quickly."
Regardless, we can’t wait to hear more about the forthcoming production, and are very much looking forward to hearing a stonking Mustang Sally or Try a Little Tenderness live! The show opens in October, but there’s huge discounts on preview packages for September, so book now so for some excellent deals.
Deal of the week
Want to go see The Commitments? Want to see it for 5% off the price on the website? Go on then! Use the code COMMITMENTBLOG at the end of your booking to get a bit of money off.