‘The Jungle’ Sets Move To San Francisco’s Fabled Curran Theater After Hit Runs In London And New York

EXCLUSIVE: After acclaimed and sold-out runs in London and New York, current-events-based play The Jungle will have its West Coast premiere at the storied Curran Theater in San Francisco this spring.

Carole Shorenstein Hays and Sonia Friedman Productions with Tom Kirdahy made the announcement. The Jungle was written by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson and is directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin.

The Good Chance Theatre, National Theatre and Young Vic production dramatizes the conditions and cross-cultural blending of refugees from various nations at a sprawling camp in Calais, France, known as the Jungle. The immersive production brings the audience close to the men, women and children fleeing war and persecution as they form unlikely bonds and find warmth despite the dangerous and squalid setting.

Miriam Buether’s award-winning set design debuted in the West End production and traveled to St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. A similar transformation is in store for the Curran, a fabled home not only to stage productions but to film productions over the decades, including All About Eve.

The limited engagement at the Curran will begin March 26 and will run through May 19.

The majority of the New York cast will transfer with the production, including actors from refugee backgrounds, some of whom passed through the actual Jungle. Full casting will be announced at a later date.

For St. Ann’s, the show’s run, which ends January 27, follows that of Oklahoma. The well-received new staging of the Rogers & Hart classic is headed for Broadway later this year.

“By putting such a heartbreakingly human face on a story too often told through statistics, The Jungle manages to provide us with both an incredible evening of theater and a moral imperative for our times,” Hays said. “It is precisely the show America needs right now, as we struggle mightily to harness the collective strength of our better selves.”

Along with Buether, the creative team for The Jungle includes Catherine Kodicek (Costume), Jon Clark (Lighting), Paul Arditti (Sound), John Pfumojena (Composition), Duncan McLean & Tristan Shepherd (Video), Julia Horan CGD
(Casting) and David Lan (Executive Producer).

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