Vanessa Redgrave Blooms Again in Rose???
Date: 10 November 2009
Vanessa Redgrave was last on the London stage in 2008 in the one-woman play The Year of Magical Thinking, based on Joan Didion’s memoir about the death of her husband and daughter, which transferred to the National after success in New York. Subsequently, of course, in a horrific instance of life imitating art, Redgrave’s own daughter, the actress Natasha Richardson, died unexpectedly following a skiing accident (See News, 19 Mar 2009).
Now another solo piece about another survivor may be what lures Redgrave back to the stage in the new year. We hear she’s in talks to appear in a revival of Martin Sherman’s 1999 play Rose, which tells the life story of a feisty Jewish woman. Rose’s life began in a tiny Russian village, took her to Warsaw's ghettos and a ship called the Exodus and finally to the boardwalks of Atlantic City, the Arizona canyons and salsa-flavoured nights in Miami Beach. Olympia Dukakis made her British stage premiere in the role at the National’s Cottesloe ten years ago (See News, 13 Apr 1999).
Redgrave has also reportedly been asked by her friend and fellow actress Eileen Atkins to appear in a stage version of Helen Garner's novella The Spare Room next year (See The Goss, 26 Aug 2009).
