Pennington Joins Scacchi in The Guardsman

Stage veteran Michael Pennington will join British film star Greta Scacchi in Janet Suzman's revival of Ferenc Molnar's The Guardsman, which is likely to open in the West End on 11 October, though a venue has yet to be confirmed. The production premieres at Bath's Theatre Royal on 11 September 2000 and continues to Richmond prior to the West End.

Pennington's many theatre credits include An Ideal Husband, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, and the Peter Hall repertory season at the Piccadilly where he appeared in The Misanthrope, Major Barbara, and Filumena with Dame Judi Dench. Most recently, Pennington starred in the RSC production of Timon of Athens.

Scacchi is best known for her roles in films such as Presumed Innocent, White Mischief, Heat and Dust, Shattered and Jefferson in Paris. Her stage credits include Uncle Vanya in the West End in 1998 and last year's Chichester Festival production of Easy Virtue, part of the Noel Coward centenary celebrations. She has also performed The Doll's House and Simpatico in Australia.

Pennington and Scacchi are joined in the cast by Nickolas Grace, Georgina Hale, Laura Macauley, Jacqueline Skarvellis and Tim Faulkner. The Guardsman is a backstage comedy about a lovelorn and long suffering actor who is consumed by jealousy of his actress wife's admirers. Intent on testing the lady's fidelity, the actor disguises himself and attempts to seduce his own wife. But will she or won't she take the bait? The play, written in 1910, inspired the musical Enter the Guardsman - with book by Scott Wentworth, music by Craig Bohmler and lyrics by Marion Adler ­ which played at the Donmar Warehouse in 1997, starring Janie Dee and Alexander Hanson.

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