Reeves' Women Adaptation Heads to West End

Just as a musical version of Little Women gears up for Broadway, a straight play based on the Louisa May Alcott novel is coming to the West End. The show is set to begin previews at the Duchess Theatre on September 27.

Little Women centers on the March sisters, coming of age in Civil War-era New England. Emma Reeves has adapted the book for the stage. This production of Little Women has been around for some time. It played numerous small productions before moving to the Lilian Baylis Theatre at Sadler's Wells, where it has run for the past two seasons.

In a review of the play, Lyn Gardner of The Guardian wrote: "Watching Emma Reeves's serviceable and largely enjoyable adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel, it seems improbable that any modern miss would take the March girls as role models. If the novel speaks to us at all, it is as a piece of romantic fiction, and in Reeves's version it is the pairings off that have you on the edge of your seat, not the way the girls subdue and conquer themselves to become Good Wives."

Little Women, directed by Andrew Loudon, is scheduled to officially open in the West End on October 13.