Philadelphia! Here We Go Again???
Date: 15 March 2004
Will
The Philadelphia Story ever receive its oft-touted starry West End revival? According to the
Daily Mail, the latest celeb to pick up the baton is
Kevin Spacey, who wants to appear in Philip Barry’s 1939 comedy next spring as part of his inaugural season as artistic director of the Old Vic. The newspaper reports that Spacey hopes to lure a Hollywood hottie like Cameron Diaz or
Gwyneth Paltrow to tackle the role immortalised on stage and screen by the late Katherine Hepburn.
The Philadelphia Story was originally due to be revived at the West End’s Shaftesbury Theatre in 2001, starring Calista Flockhart, but that revival was indefinitely postponed, supposedly because of foot-and-mouth and general election timing concerns (See
News, 18 Apr 2001). Hollywood’s Julia Roberts subsequently expressed interest in the project but apparently cooled on the idea following Hepburn’s death in summer 2003 (See
The Goss, 9 Sep 2003). The stage play, a Broadway vehicle for Hepburn, was famously made into George Cukor’s 1940 Oscar-winning film, in which Hepburn, playing a haughty heiress, was joined by Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant.
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