Glorious! is a 2005 stage comedy by Peter Quilter, telling the story of Florence Foster Jenkins, "the worst singer in the world".
Glorious! is a 2005 stage comedy by Peter Quilter, telling the story of Florence Foster Jenkins, "the worst singer in the world".
The show premiered at Birmingham Repertory Theatre, followed by a UK tour. The production transferred to London's West End in November 2005. This premiere production starred Maureen Lipman who was made a Dame in 2020. It ran for 6 months at the Duchess Theatre and was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy. It has since played in 35 countries and been translated into more than 20 languages. [1]
The comedy is based on the true story of Florence Foster Jenkins, a New York City socialite and amateur singer who could not carry a tune but was convinced she was a great singer. She performed mostly privately for trusted friends, so that she would not be mocked, and made recordings. Ultimately, at the age of 76, she gave a legendary public performance in Carnegie Hall in New York. [2]
The British website This Is Theatre said, "Based upon a true story, the play spins from Florence's charity recitals and extravagant balls, through to her bizarre recording sessions and an ultimate triumph at Carnegie Hall in this hilarious and heart-warming comedy." The website quoted reviews from major British publications: "A lunaticly funny comedy". ( The Sunday Times ) "An affectionate tribute to a 22-carat eccentric... Glorious! is just that." ( The Sun ) "In Peter Quilter's touching play, starring Maureen Lipman, what begins as a joke becomes a lesson in how to live your dream." ( The Daily Express ) [3] A review in the British Theatre Guide described the play as "an interesting portrait of an eccentric American woman who, despite her patent lack of ability to sing, was firmly convinced of her greatness as a soprano singer." [4]
Since its London premiere, the comedy has been produced throughout the world, including runs in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, Israel, Brazil, Venezuela, the United States, Canada, Iceland, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Italy, Czechia, Poland, Estonia, Slovenia, Finland, Turkey, Greece, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Switzerland, Slovakia and Spain. Stage productions have also twice been broadcast live on television - in Japan and Poland.
Dame Maureen Diane Lipman is an English actress, columnist and comedian. She trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and her stage work has included appearances with the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. She was made a dame in the 2020 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to charity, entertainment and the arts.
Florence Foster Jenkins was an American socialite and amateur soprano who became known, and mocked, for her flamboyant performance costumes and notably poor singing ability. Stephen Pile ranked her "the world's worst opera singer ... No one, before or since, has succeeded in liberating themselves quite so completely from the shackles of musical notation."
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Sutton Lenore Foster is an American actress. She is known for her work on the Broadway stage, for which she has won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical twice, in 2002 for her role as Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie, and in 2011 for her performance as Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes, a role which she reprised in 2021 for a production in London and for which she received a nomination for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical. Her other Broadway credits include Grease, Little Women, The Drowsy Chaperone, Young Frankenstein, Shrek the Musical, Violet, The Music Man, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and Once Upon a Mattress. On television, Foster played the lead role in the short-lived ABC Family comedy-drama Bunheads from 2012 to 2013. From 2015 to 2021, she starred in the TV Land comedy-drama Younger.
Susan Elizabeth Jenkins is an English actress. She is most widely known for her roles as Gloria Todd in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street (1985–1988) and as Jackie Corkhill in the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside (1991–2001).
The Duchess Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster, London, located in Catherine Street near Aldwych.
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Coryse Borg is a Maltese actress, director and SEO content writer, resident in Malta. She appeared in a range of productions, both in the theatre and in the movies. She currently works as an SEO content writer and also provides writing, voice over, proofreading and hosting services through her venture SayIt.
Peter Quilter is a West End and Broadway playwright whose plays have been translated into 30 languages and performed in over 40 countries. He is best known for his Broadway play End of the Rainbow, which was adapted for the Oscar-winning film Judy (2019), starring Renée Zellweger. He is also author of the West End comedy "Glorious!" about the amateur opera singer Florence Foster Jenkins. Peter has twice been nominated for the Olivier Award and his Broadway debut was nominated for 3 Tony Awards.
Joanna Foster is a British actress active in theatre and television since 1978. On stage, she created roles in the world premieres of Andrew Davies's Diary of A Desperate Woman (1979), Anthony Burgess's The Eve of Saint Venus (1979), and Olwen Wymark's Brezhnev's Children (1991), and has performed leading roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal National Theatre, The Young Vic, Leicester Haymarket Theatre, and The Dukes, Lancaster among other theatre companies. She was the fourth and final actress to portray Susan Barlow in Coronation Street.
Braham Sydney Murray, OBE was an English theatre director. In 1976, he was one of five founding Artistic Directors of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, and the longest-serving.
Cosmé McMunn, who used the name Cosmé McMoon, was an Irish-Mexican-American pianist and composer, who worked as the accompanist to tone-deaf soprano Florence Foster Jenkins.
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Florence Foster Jenkins is a 2016 biographical film directed by Stephen Frears and written by Nicholas Martin and Julia Kogan. It stars Meryl Streep as Florence Foster Jenkins, a New York heiress known for her generosity and poor singing. Hugh Grant plays her manager and long-time companion, St. Clair Bayfield. Other cast members include Simon Helberg, Rebecca Ferguson, and Nina Arianda.
The Knowledge is a 1979 British comedy-drama television film about a group of men and a woman doing "The Knowledge", the training required to become a London taxi driver. It was directed by Bob Brooks with an ensemble cast including Nigel Hawthorne, Mick Ford, Jonathan Lynn and Maureen Lipman.
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