Jeremy Irons in ‘Camelot’ Benefit Concert

Jeremy Irons Will Join Melissa Errico and James Barbour for Irish Rep Camelot Benefit Concert

Jeremy Irons will reprise his role of King Arthur, from the 2005 one-night-only performance at the Hollywood Bowl.

Photos from the 2005 production of Camelot:

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By Andrew Gans from Playbill.com
06 May 2011

Academy Award and Tony Award winner Jeremy Irons will play the role of King Arthur in a one-night-only concert staging of Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot this summer to benefit Irish Repertory Theatre.

As previously reported, Melissa Errico and James Barbour, who played Guenevere and Lancelot, respectively, in the Hollywood Bowl’s summer 2005 production of Camelot, will return to those roles for the upcoming concert.

The benefit concert of the classic musical about the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table will be held June 6 at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway.

Charlotte Moore will direct the evening with musical direction by Mark Hartman. Additional casting will be announced shortly. The concert will feature a full orchestra and a chorus of 50.

Camelot — featuring music by Frederick Loewe and book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner — originally opened at Broadway’s Majestic Theatre in Dec. 1960, playing 873 performances before closing Jan. 5, 1963. The premiere company included Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, Robert Goulet, Robert Coote, John Cullum and Roddy McDowall. The classic Lerner and Loewe score boasts such tunes as “If Ever I Would Leave You,” “I Loved You Once in Silence,” “Follow Me,” “I Wonder What the King Is Doing Tonight” and the title tune.

Melissa Errico, most recently seen on Broadway in Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, began her professional career portraying Cosette in Les Misérables, and she followed with leading Broadway roles in Anna Karenina, My Fair Lady, High Society, Amour (Tony nomination) and Dracula, plus roles in the City Center Encores! productions of Call Me Madam and One Touch of Venus. She appeared in a production of Threepenny Opera at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and her recent Off-Broadway credits include Candida (Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Play), Finian’s Rainbow and Aunt Dan and Lemon. She also starred in the Hollywood Bowl presentations of Camelot and The Sound of Music. Errico’s debut solo recording was titled “Blue Like That”; her new recording is titled “Lullabies and Wildflowers.” For more information visit http://www.melissaerrico.com.

James Barbour was most recently seen as Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities. His other Broadway credits include Assassins, Urinetown, Jane Eyre, Beauty and the Beast, Carousel and Cyrano—The Musical. He has appeared in such films as “Eight Crazy Nights” and has guest-starred on such television shows as “Sex and the City” and “Ed.”

Jeremy Irons won a Tony Award for his performance in the original Broadway production of The Real Thing. The English actor also won Academy and Golden Globe awards for his work in the 1990 film “Reversal of Fortune.” Irons was also Golden-Globe nominated for “The Mission” and “Brideshead Revisited.” Among his London stage credits are Embers and The Rover.

Irish Repertory’s 2011 Gala benefit performance of Camelot plays June 6 at 7 PM at the Shubert Theatre (225 West 44th Street), followed by dinner at Sardi’s (234 West 44th Street). For Dinner and Theatre Packages, contact Maureen Cavanaugh at (212) 255-0270 or email maureen@irishrep.org. Individual tickets to the performance only run $100-$300; call (212) 727-2737 or online at http://www.irishrep.org.

Impressionism PLAYBILL Scans

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Allen and Irons Connect the Dots in Impressionism

from Playbill.com

Allen and Irons Connect the Dots in Impressionism

By Harry Haun
March 20, 2009

Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen bring their new show, Impressionism, into full focus.

Photo by Joan Marcus

Photo by Joan Marcus

Photos by Joan Marcus

The last — if not, thankfully, lasting — impression left by Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons on Broadway, prior to their Impressionism at the Schoenfeld Theatre, was as Tony winners.

She was cited in 1988 for the first of two Broadway outings, Lanford Wilson’s Burn This, and he was honored in 1984 for his one and only, Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing.

Both went west to mine the movies. Irons struck Oscar gold with 1990’s “Reversal of Fortune,” reteaming with his Real Thing co-star Glenn Close to play Claus and Sunny von Bulow; Allen has been chipping away at the award — with three nominations so far (as Pat Nixon in “Nixon,” an accused Salem witch in “The Crucible” and a nominated U.S. veep in “The Contender”). Nobody expected them back on the Broadway boards.

But here they are, surprising even themselves. “The play,” they say, made them do it — a wise and witty, moving and mature speculation on love and art by TV writer and producer Michael Jacobs. For both of them, it was love at first read.

The newness of it all is what got Irons’ vote — “I suppose because I come from a rich heritage of theatre. There are so many classic plays to do, but because I work in film, it’s always a new story. I know the thrill — and the risk — of seeing if something flies. A new play contains the same excitement for me as a film: Will it work or won’t it? In London, over the past two or three years, I’ve done two new plays, and I think the fact that they were new plays is really what attracted me to them.”

Irons has maintained his stage career in England. “My home is in Ireland or in England. If I’m going to come away for six months, I’m giving up a lot, so, although I love being in New York, it has to be for really worthwhile work.”

Jacobs’ play obviously met that lofty criterion, but Irons is hard-pressed to say how or why: “It’s not for nothing it’s called Impressionism. When you stand up close to an impressionist painting, what you see are dots or fairly vulgar brush strokes. Not till you stand away do you really see it. I think it is very much a company show, and we all are some of those dots which go to make up the picture when we stand back.”

(Director Jack O’Brien selected the “dots” surrounding his stars with conspicuous class and care: Marsha Mason, André De Shields, Michael T. Weiss and Aaron Lazar.)

O’Brien and Allen have worked together only once — a good 20 years ago on “All My Sons” for PBS — but he had no qualms about phoning her up one day last June with “I have this play, darling. You must absolutely just do it. I’m bringing it over in 15 minutes.”

“I had no intention of doing a play,” admits Allen, who, in fact, hasn’t in 19 years (since she was the original Heidi in The Heidi Chronicles). “The next day, I read it and was moved by it — incredibly moved by it — and I thought, ‘I can’t not do this play.’

“It’s very adult, about two people of a certain age who’ve lived a lot of life, been damaged but found a way to be together, given what they’ve been through and how they navigate the world: They take time to get to know each other before jumping.”

The play is set in a small art gallery owned by Allen’s character, and Irons is a war-weary photojournalist who has come to New York to hide and heal. The two meet.

“The beautiful thing about this love story,” she says, “is how the art metaphors, how art — impressionism, in particular — connects and relates to how people interact.

“At one point, Jeremy and I have a little discussion about what we think life is — realism or impressionism — and it’s in reference to what these paintings do. The paintings are a metaphor for ‘Do you think life is real, or is it just impressionistic?'” Allen opts for impressionistic.

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