Stephen Fry adapts Ealing comedy for the West End | Kind Hearts and Coronets set to open next year © BBC/Talkback/Brian Ritchie

Stephen Fry adapts Ealing comedy for the West End

Kind Hearts and Coronets set to open next year

Stephen Fry has adapted the classic Ealing comedy Kind Hearts And Coronets for the West End stage.

As Alec Guinness did in the 1949 film, one actor will play all eight members of the eccentric aristocratic D’Ascoyne family.

Finding the right actor, and theatre, will determine whether the play will open next year, as producer Sonia Friedman hopes.

The film is about the debonair yet impoverished Louis Mazzini, who bumps off each member of the D’Ascoyne family who stands in the way of his inheritance. He was played by Dennis Price in the film, below:

Kind HEarts

Friedman, who is currently staging Harry Potter And The Cursed Child in London, told the Daily Mail’s Baz Bamigboye that Fry’s script ‘sparkled’ and that he ‘brings his customary wit and dazzling wordplay to this deliciously dark tale of class, revenge and madcap murder’.

It is not the only Ealing comedy heading to the West End, as Stephen Mangan and Sue Johnson are to star in a stage adaptation of 1951’s Man In The White Suit from Septmber.

Both shows are to be directed by Sean Foley, who previously had success with yet another Ealing comedy, Graham Linehan's adaptation of The Ladykillers

A restored version of Kind Hearts And Coronets recently returned to cinemas to mark its 70th anniversary, and will be released on DVD on Monday

Published: 21 Jun 2019

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