Gone With the Wind Musical to Debut in London, Directed by Nunn

Trevor Nunn has signed on to direct a new musical adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's classic novel Gone with the Wind. The curtain will go up on the show at the New London Theatre in April 2008, with booking opening in September this year.

Producer Aldo Scrofani of Columbia Artists Theatricals in New York has been developing Gone with the Wind with Nunn and composer/lyricist Margaret Martin for more than three years. Gone With the Wind is Martin's first musical theater project. Scrofani has teamed up with London producer Colin Ingram to produce the West End premiere. Casting, dates and further information about the production will be announced in the coming months.

Set in 1860s Atlanta, Georgia, Gone with the Wind follows the story of the 17-year-old Scarlett O'Hara, the eldest of three daughters living a life of luxury on their father's plantation. When President Lincoln demands the end of slavery in the South, the Civil War begins and Scarlett's life and that of her family are thrown into turmoil. Her none-more-tempestuous relationship with army captain Rhett Butler serves as a metaphor for the irrevocable changes being wrought upon America itself.

Gone with the Wind, published in 1936, is one of the best selling novels of the 20th century and won author Margaret Mitchell the Pulitzer Prize. Three years later in 1939, the film adaptation, starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, made box office history as the highest grossing film of all time and is regarded as one of the bona fide classics of American popular cinema.

The prolific Nunn has most recently directed King Lear in the Royal Shakespeare Company's Complete Works Festival, Porgy and Bess at the Savoy Theatre and Tom Stoppard's multi award-winning Rock 'n' Roll at the Royal Court and Duke of York's. Of Gone With the Wind, he said: "Having now worked on adapting two vast novels for the stage, Nicholas Nickleby and Les Misérables, I am drawn to the challenge of telling Margaret Mitchell's epic story through words, music and the imaginative resources of the theatre. The major turning point of American history is conveyed through Mitchell's extraordinary cast of characters, black and white, as they pursue their different ideas of the future, and of the past."

Producer Scrofani added: "Our task in presenting the musical stage version of this epic combines our obligation to remain true to Margaret Mitchell's original story and characters while also revealing its relevance to our lives today. Our hope is that this theatrical adaptation will cause our audiences to rediscover this timeless and rich story, while also providing each of them a meaningful and memorable experience."