Brickhill-Burke Company
Brickhill-Burke Company
A company run by Joan Brickhill and Louis Burke, to produce large-scale musicals and extravaganzas at venues such as Sun City. Among their well remembered shows are Mame, Annie and Barnum.
The Minstrel Follies (1974), The Minstrel Scandals.
They took over the lease of His Majesty's Theatre forming a company with themselves as directors together with Graham English. They reopened the theatre with the black musical Meropa featuring the Phoenix Players on the 3 December 1974. This production was later presented as a command performance at the London Palladium.
They presented The Tempest (March 1975), Gypsy in the evenings in 1975 while they staged Shakespeare setwork pieces in the afternoons like Henry IV, Part One, directed by John Sichel and starring Michael McGovern.
Together with PACT, they revived The Sound of Music in June 1976.
To celebrate His Majesty's Theatre's 30th birthday, they staged Follies Fantastique, starring Joan Brickhill, Alvon Collison and Beni Mason on 30 November 1976. Brickhill-Burke were responsible for the sets and costumes and the show ran until April 1977.
Brickhill and Burke ran a matinee season of Winnie the Pooh at His Majesty's Theatre during December 1977.
They staged Alan Aykbourn’s trilogy, The Norman Conquests (1979), They're Playing Our Song (1980), Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Hello Dolly! (1980), Bedazzled (1981), I Love my Wife (1982), Mame (1982), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1983).
Sources
De Beer, 1995; SACD 1973; SACD 1975/76
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