Parade Premiere, Betrayal Highlight New Season at London's Donmar

The musical Parade is heading to London, where it will receive its West End premiere at the Donmar Warehouse. The production will be directed and choreographed by Rob Ashford and will open on September 24 following previews from September 14. Also on the Donmar's summer slate are revivals of Harold Pinter's Betrayal, directed by Roger Michell, and a bill of absurdist plays by N.F. Simpson and Michael Frayn, to be presented under the umbrella title Absurdia and directed by Douglas Hodge, who is a newly appointed associate director of the theater.

Parade, which opened on Broadway in 1998, won Tony Awards in for both Best Book by Alfred Uhry and Best Original Musical Score for Jason Robert Brown's music and lyrics. Based on the true story of Leo Frank who was convicted of the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan, the musical is set in Atlanta, Georgia in 1913, where a Jewish man from Brooklyn finds himself accused of killing a young factory worker. Parade recalls the press frenzy and public hated surrounding the trial. In a time of religious intolerance, political injustice and racial tension, the musical explores the endurance of love and hope against all the odds.

Ashford, who collaborated with the Donmar's Artistic Director Michael Grandage on both the Donmar production of Guys and Dolls in the West End and on national tour, as well as the current West End staging of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Evita, is making his directorial debut with Parade. He is currently working on the new John Kander and Fred Ebb musical Curtains, opening on Broadway in April. No casting has been announced yet for Parade, which will run through November 24.

Michell's new staging of Betrayal will open on June 5 following previews from May 31. First seen at the National Theatre in 1978, where Peter Hall directed it, the piece was last revived in the West End by Hall at the Duchess Theatre in 2003. Michell previously directed Pinter's Old Times at the Donmar in 2004. His other theater credits include Joe Penhall's upcoming new play Landscape with Weapon which will premiere at the National Theatre, the original National Theatre staging of Penhall's Blue/Orange that transferred to the West End's Duchess Theatre, Under Milk Wood and The Coup both at the National. He is also a film director of such features as Venus, Enduring Love, The Mother, Notting Hill and Titanic Town. Betrayal will run to July 21.

Absurdia, a bill that comprises two plays by Simpson entitled A Resounding Tinkle and Gladly Otherwise, joined by the world premiere of Frayn's The Crimson Hotel, will open on July 31 following previews from July 26. They will be directed by Hodge, whose production of the farce See How they Run played at the Duchess Theatre last year. Absurdia runs to July 31.