Star Trek Stewart Masters Builder for June???

Patrick Stewart has been alluding to his plans to return to the West End in a "classic play" for over a year now (See The Goss, 10 Jan 2002). After much speculation, it looks to be full steam ahead for a West End opening this June of a Stewart-headed revival of... The Master Builder. One of Henrik Ibsen's later works, the 1892 play tells the story of Halvard Solness, a renowned but aging builder, whose obsession with building tall spires for his new house is matched by his fear of younger rivals. Coincidentally, the piece shares a character - Hilde Wangel - with Ibsen's 1888 play The Lady from the Sea, which will also receive a high-profile production this April care of Trevor Nunn as part of Michael Attenborough's inaugural season at the Almeida Theatre. Stewart is best known internationally for his sci-fi screen roles in the likes of Star Trek and X Men, but he's also a classically trained actor, whose many stage credits include The Tempest, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and, in the US, his one-man adaptation of Dickens' The Christmas Carol. In 2001, he returned to his Yorkshire roots to star in the West Yorkshire Playhouse production of JB Priestley's rarely performed Johnson Over Jordan.

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