The Stage

West End Hair for Latitude Festival

Published Wednesday 10 March 2010 at 15:15 by Alistair Smith

Cameron Mackintosh’s production of Hair is to become the first West End musical to appear at the Latitude Festival, when the cast of the show perform a 30-minute excerpt from the production at the event this summer.

Now in its fifth year, Latitude is a mixed art form event held on a festival site on the Suffolk coast and hosts popular music and comedy, as well as theatre, dance, opera and a number of other art forms. The theatre line-up for this year’s event, which is expected to attract 27,500 people and takes place from July 15-18, will feature debuts from the Opera Group, the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, Northern Stage and Les Enfants Terribles, which is writing a brand-new musical entitled Vaudevillians for the event. Hair, meanwhile, will perform on Latitude’s Waterfront Stage on July 18.

Tania Harrison, arts and special events promoter for Latitude, told The Stage: “Hair is a first for us. It’s something that I’ve looked at a couple of times and I think it has a great fit within a festival - it’s definitely the right type of audience. It’s going to be fun and we may look at doing something quite surprising and special with it as well.

“With the theatre arena, we’re going to give it a thrust stage this year - it’s easier for touring theatre to come into a thrust stage. There will also be theatre productions outside of the arena, which will actually use the festival space. I’m working on creating a couple of pieces in a new area called the Faraway Forest. We’ve definitely got more theatre this year than in previous years.”

Other big names returning to the festival include the Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal Opera House, Bush Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith, English Touring Theatre and Soho Theatre.

In 2008, Latitude won The Stage Award for Special Achievement in Regional Theatre for its success at reaching new audiences.

More productions are also expected to be announced closer to the date. For further coverage, visit www.thestage.co.uk/news.