A reminder that “Otherwise Engaged” will start it’s West End season on Monday (though previews are being shown now). The details are below:

“Otherwise Engaged”
Previews from: 25 October 2005
Opening night: 31 October 2005
Closing: 28 January 2006
Times: Mon-Sat 19:30, Mats Thu & Sat 15:00
Prices: £10-£40 (Reduced price previews £10-£25)

Criterion
Box Office: 0870 060 2313
Genre: Play Subgenre: Comedy
Age suitability: General

Richard E. Grant plays Simon Hench, a sophisticated, urbane and selfish publisher who wants nothing more than to go home to his luxuriant abode and listen to his new recording of Wagner’s Parsifal. Like all good egocentric publishers, he tries to keep his family and friends at arms length. They, on the other hand, have other ideas, and turn up one by one as Hench’s life finally catches up with him.

Richard E. Grant has made his name playing oddball characters on film; out of work actor Withnail in Withnail And I, advertising executive with a talking boil Denis Dinbleby Bagley in How To Get Ahead In Advertising and asylum-running vampire-hater Dr Seward in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. On stage, his credits include The Importance Of Being Earnest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Play What I Wrote.

Simon Gray, who was awarded the CBE for services to literature earlier this year, has over 30 plays in his canon of work, including Quartermaine’s Terms, Butley, The Late Middle Classes, Cell Mates, The Old Masters and Japes.

Author: Simon Gray; Director: Simon Curtis; Producer: Mark Rubinstein, Sonia Friedman Productions, Lee Menzies and TEG Productions; Designer: Simon Higlett; Lighting Designer: Tim Mitchell;
Cast includes: Richard E Grant, Anthony Head, David Bamber, Peter Wight, Liam Garrigan, Amanda Ryan

Thanks Joan.

More “Wah-Wah” today. Susan W sent me another report on REG at the “Wah-Wah” premiere in Edinburgh. This time it’s from Hello Magazine and you can read here.

Brenda also sent in an article about “Wah-Wah” which she found at The Guardian Online. You can read here.

I’ve just added a couple of “Wah-Wah” reports from the Edinburgh Festival to the site today. Both were sent to me by Sue W and come from different papers. The first is from The Glasgow Daily Record which you can read here, and the second is from The Herald, which you can read here.

I received this one from three people today – Sue W, Stargazer and REG himself. I thought, with so much enthusiasm, I should put this up straight away. Enjoy!

Richard E Grant still talks darkly about a period in 1985 when he was unemployed for a full nine months.

“When you’ve been around as long as I have, it sounds disingenuous to say you’re anxious about work, and I’m not here to sing the blues about it,” he says. “But that left a great big mark on me.”

At the moment Grant is hardly under-employed; in fact, it’s rather difficult to avoid him. His are the honeyed tones of the villain in Tim Burton’s animated fairytale Corpse Bride.

He’s just finished Above and Beyond, a “gung-ho” TV mini-series about flying Hurricane bombers across the North Atlantic in the winter of 1940. Wah-Wah, his debut as a writer-director, opens early next year. And he’s presently starring in Simon Gray’s comedy Otherwise Engaged, which arrives in the West End next week.

To read more, click here.

OK, so we mucked up the dates on this (damn TV Guide). The latest from Stargazer (and confirmed by various TV announcements and proclamations everywhere) is that REG will be on T4 this week, Sunday 30th October – Channel 4, 09:00 – 09:30, rather than the week just past! Sorry for the confusion there, folks.

For those of you who need a reminder on what we’re talking about, here’s the blurb again:

“Vernon and June are joined in the studio by Richard E Grant, Anthony Head, and About a Boy star Nicholas Hoult. With performances from Magic Numbers and Morning Runner. hit40uk hit40uk hangs out on slow, sensitive crooner Daniel Powter’s video shoot. Plus the chart rundown, previews of upcoming videos and this week’s number one. “

You know the drill – VCR’s, timers & remotes…