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Dateline: 4th December, 2005
Alex Armitage has joined the production team of Sister Josephine Kicks The Habit, in a role currently being described as advisory executive producer. Alex is the head of the Noel Gay Organisation (he is actually Noel Gay's grandson) and, at the age of 18, was Jake Thackray's first agent. Today he is the boss of the multi-million pound organisation which represents, amongst many other artists and presenters, David Frost, Danny Baker, Stephen Fry, Steve Punt, Richard Stilgoe, Richard Littlejohn, Jeremy Hardy, Su Pollard, Sian Williams, Jeremy Vine, Sarah Montague and Amanda Platell. He is also a successful West End producer and was responsible for the revival of his grandfather's hit show Me and My Girl which ran in the West End for eight years, originally with Robert Lindsay and Emma Thompson in the lead roles, and went on to play on Broadway for three years. Alex's role with Sister Josephine will be to work with writer Ian McMillan and director Fine Time Fontayne on developing the show - to include several more of Jake's most popular songs and to re-work plot-lines and presentation. The object of the exercise will not be to enlarge the show, but to apply to it the universal structural principles which have been adduced from all the great stage musicals - a subject in which Alex specialises. He anticipates that this will involve him in "constructive, creative antagonism" but says of Ian and Fine Time, "I was very impressed by their enthusiasms and am happy with them working on the show together. I think they will be able to come up with something special." Executive Producer Ian Watson said, "We are unbelievably lucky to have Alex on board - a man who knows as much about Jake, about musicals and about getting shows into theatres as anyone anywhere. We were delighted with the show we put out in May and June - as were audiences wherever we played - but as the product of just three weeks' rehearsal it was always going to need more work and development. With the benefit of hindsight, it can only gain from the sort of radical re-working that Alex will guide us through." The immediate implication of this exciting development is that plans for the national tour of Sister Jo will be put on hold until the production team is confident that the re-worked show is ready to put before and audience. With the time needed to raise the capital to finance it, this probably means a launch in 2007. Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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