A STAGE version of Roddy Doyle’s best-selling novel, The Commitments will open on London’s West End on October 8.
The show will be directed by Jamie Lloyd (Macbeth) and will run for at least a year at the Palace Theatre.
Previews will begin on September 21 with all preview tickets priced at half-price. The cheapest preview tickets start at £5 and are on sale now.
Speaking at the launch of the show in London this morning Doyle, who has adapted his own work for the stage, said that the decision to turn his 25-year-old novel into a musical had been a “long dawning”.
He said that there had been interest in an adaptation “immediately after the film came out” but that, at the time, he had been “keen to get on with different work so I ignored The Commitments for years”.
He added that it was only when he began attending musicals in London with his kids that he “began to open up his mind to the idea of a Commitments musical.”
The stage adaptation will retain its setting of 1980's Dublin with Lloyd.
Three quarters of the cast will hail from Ireland and many will be making their West End debut. Most will be under the age of 21 with Doyle commenting that many will not have been born when the novel was first published. No cast members have yet been announced
The Commitments tells the story of Jimmy Rabitte, a young working class music fan, who shapes an unlikely bunch of amateur musicians into the finest soul band Dublin has ever produced.
Read a Q & A with Roddy Doyle here.
