The Ambassador Theatre Group: Press: Press Releases
Press Releases
Issued : 7 January 2002
Sonia Friedman, currently the producer at the Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG), has created with ATG a new production company, Sonia Friedman Productions (SFP). SFP will be a subsidiary of ATG.
Friedman will retain her current role at ATG - producing and programming all the work at the New Ambassadors Theatre, as well as initiating a wide range of work for other theatres across the West End, UK and internationally. SFP will additionally take on responsibility for larger scale work including musicals and multiple media projects.
Sonia joined ATG in 1998, and relaunched the New Ambassadors Theatre in May 1999. Of the 22 shows that she has produced, co-produced or programmed, successes include Stones in His Pockets, Spoonface Steinberg, Krapp’s Last Tape with John Hurt, The Vagina Monologues, Last Dance at Dum Dum, Speed-the-Plow, Conor McPherson’s new play Port Authority, and most recently a major revival of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, which has just transferred to the Comedy Theatre starring Victoria Hamilton and Eddie Izzard.
Sonia initiated the current co-production of Noises Off when it opened at the Royal National Theatre (RNT) in October 2000. She then transferred the show to the Piccadilly Theatre in May 2001 and to Broadway where it opened in November last year to record-breaking box office business and huge public acclaim. Sonia also co-produced Peter Ackroyd’s The Mystery of Charles Dickens with Simon Callow and Simon Gray’s The Late Middle Classes directed by Harold Pinter.
Future productions to be co-produced by SFP include Therese Racquin in a version by Nicholas Wright, directed by David Leveaux, Benefactors by Michael Frayn directed by Jeremy Sams, Macbeth directed by Edward Hall and starring Sean Bean, Hay Fever by Noël Coward, starring Penelope Wilton, Marc Salem’s Mind Games, a new stage adaptation of the film classic The King of Comedy and major new production of the musical Funny Girl, starring Maria Friedman.
Sonia’s producing career began at the RNT where she was head of Mobile Productions and Theatre for Young People. In 1993, with Max Stafford-Clark she co-founded Out of Joint, now one of Britain’s leading touring companies, where she produced many new plays including The Steward of Christendom by Sebastian Barry, Shopping & Fucking by Mark Ravenhill and Blue Heart by Caryl Churchill.