Carmel Morgan's Smaller to Play the West End

Carmel Morgan's Smaller will have a West End run. The play is scheduled to begin previews at the Lyric Theatre on March 28. Dawn French and Alison Moyet star.

Smaller centers on Bernice Clulow French, the life and soul of the staff room, whose selfless devotion to her disabled mother, Maureen, is legend. Yet every evening as she heads home, the smile becomes fixed; Mum will want to talk. She demands dispatches from the human race, but Bernice just wants to kick her shoes off and her Mum's head in. Bernice's sister, Cath Clulow Moyet, wisely flew the nest straight from school. Now belting out karaoke classics to vomiting, rollicking hen parties in Puerto Banus, she wonders how a promising career in musical theater has gone so horribly off-key. Housebound, honor-bound and homeward-bound, the Clulows pick their way through a minefield of guilt, resentment and fear.

The show, directed by Kathy Burke, will have a brief U.K. tour before beginning performances in London. The show is set to have its official West End bow on April 4.

Before Smaller, the Lyric Theatre will house The Night of the Iguana, which begins its limited West End engagement tomorrow.