Debbie Reynolds Alive and Fabulous - Apollo Theatre
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
NEXT year, after an absence of 34 years, veteran Hollywood star Debbie Reynolds returns to the London stage with her award-winning one-woman show. Entitled Debbie Reynolds Alive and Fabulous, it runs at the Apollo Theatre from Wednesday, April 28 to Sunday, May 9, 2010.
The show, celebrating Reynolds 50 plus years in showbusiness, features actual MGM movie clips as the singer/actress reminisces about her glittering career, her many husbands and her incredible life of song and dance.
As she herself explaines: “It’s a variety show. I get to do impressions of Barbra Streisand, Mae West, Katherine Hepburn – even Jimmy Stewart!”
Reynolds film career began at MGM when, at the age of 16, she won a beauty contest impersonating Betty Hutton. Her films, in which she usually played perky, wholesome young women, include Singing in the Rain, The Unsinkable Molly Brown and That’s Entertainment!. And she is one of the few actresses to have danced with both Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.
In recent years she has appeared worldwide in her famous nightclub act, and was a series regular on TV’s Will and Grace (as Grace’s mother, Bobbi Adler). During her long career she has received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations and won the American Comedy Award.
She considers herself a “movie-oholic” and has an extensive collection of memorabilia, with over 4,000 costumes from the silent screen period to the 1970s, including Carmen Miranda’s turbans, a pair of Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, John Wayne’s guns and Marilyn Monroe’s windswept dress from The Seven Year Itch. Her goal is to create a Hollywood museum.
Presented by David King for Spirit Productions Worldwide, Debbie Reynolds Alive and Fabulous has musical direction by Joey Singer.
Prior to the West End, the show will tour to Norwich, Liverpool, Manchester, Cardiff, Brighton, Bristol, Birmingham, Basingstoke, Leicester, Windsor, Southend, Northampton, Cambridge, Malvern and Leeds.
Tickets: £49.50, £47.50, £37.50, £35.00, £25.00 (concessions available).
Times: Wednesday to Saturday at 7.30pm, Saturday matinee at 2.30pm, Sunday matinee at 4pm.
Book Online or call 0844 412 4658.