One Man, Two Guvnors to be tweaked for Broadway – WBNews

Hit comedy One Man, Two Guvnors has had a sell-out run at the National Theatre, toured the UK and is now in the West End, prior to a Broadway transfer. But the job is not yet over for playwright Richard Bean. He has revealed he will have to change parts of the play for a US audience before it opens in New York next year. “I’ve got to work all winter rewriting it for the Americans because they don’t understand any of the cricket references,” Bean told the BBC. That might be easier said than done, with much of the play set inside and outside a pub named The Cricketers Arms. One comedy scene involves a life-size cut-out of cricket legend WG Grace. It is end-of-the-pier British comedy and obviously we’re not going to destroy that.Richard Bean Several gags about the Isle of Wight’s Parkhurst prison might also get the chop. But Bean, a former stand-up comedian, promises that the changes won’t be too drastic. “The reason that the play works is that it is end-of-the-pier British comedy and obviously we’re not going to destroy that.” Slapstick adaptation One Man, Two Guvnors, which stars James Corden, opened at London’s Adelphi Theatre on Monday night to rave reviews. Michael Billington’s five-star review in The Guardian praised the show’s “mixture of improvisation with immaculate planning”. “When [Corden] begged a sandwich from the front rows, someone unexpectedly threw a pack of pork pies at him. Without losing his cool, Corden turned to the…more detail