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Adrian Lester Plays Black Henry V???

Date: 18 July 2002

Adrian Lester is tipped to play the title role in a new production of Henry V, which is on the cards for the National Theatre next spring as part of Nicholas Hytner's first season of work as the NT's artistic director. The Bard's monarch is rarely played by a black actor, but neither Lester nor Hytner are strangers to dismantling race barriers. The actor played the first black Bobby in the Donmar production of Stephen Sondheim's Company (for which he won the 1996 Olivier for Best Actor in a Musical), while the director was responsible for casting musical star Clive Rowe as the usually-as-white-as-his-name Mr Snow in the NT's 1992 production of Carousel. Last year, Lester played the title role in Peter Brook's The Tragedy of Hamlet. His other stage credits include Sweeney Todd and Six Degrees of Separation while, on film, he has appeared in Primary Colours, Love's Labour's Lost, Dust, The Final Curtain and Maybe Baby.

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