Cattrall Swaps Life at Duke of York’s for ComedyDate: 27 September 2004
The Ambassadors Theatre Group seems to be engaging in a little game of musical chairs with shows in its West End playhouses. Following Friday’s announcement that Journey's End, which first opened this past January at the Comedy Theatre, will transfer from its current home at the Playhouse to the Duke of York’s next month (See News, 24 Sep 2004), comes news today that the Whose Life Is It Anyway?, which was due to arrive this coming January at the Duke of York’s (See News, 23 Jul 2004), will instead open at the larger Comedy Theatre.
Dates for the updated version of Brian Clark’s 1978 play, directed by Peter Hall and starring Sex and the City’s Kim Cattrall (pictured), remain the same. It opens on 25 January 2005 (previews from 7 January) and continues its limited 16-week season up to 30 April 2005.
Cattrall will make her West End and British theatre debut playing paraplegic Claire Harrison. After a road accident, Harrison - an intelligently independent and sexy sculptor, now forced to rely on others - fights to reclaim the crucial decisions about her own life and death.
Originally produced for television, Whose Life Is It Anyway? had its stage premiere at London’s Mermaid Theatre in 1978, when Tom Conti starred as the artist, Ken Harrison. The award-winning production transferred to the West End. Clark rewrote the play for a female lead and Mary Tyler Moore won a Tony Award for her portrayal of Claire Harrison in the 1979 Broadway production. The 1981 Hollywood film starred Richard Dreyfuss as Harrison.
Clark has newly updated the play to take into account medical advances over the past 30 years. In an age when doctors can keep patients alive irrespective of quality of life, the question of freedom of choice remains highly topical.
Though born in Liverpool and trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), Cattrall is best known for her work Stateside, particularly her role as sexy publicist Samantha Jones in the now-completed American TV series Sex and the City. She has also appeared in numerous films (including Police Academy and its sequels) and television series. Her US theatre credits include A View from the Bridge, Three Sisters, Miss Julie, Wild Honey and The Misanthrope.
Whose Life Is It Anyway? is produced in the West End by Sonia Friedman Productions and Mark Rubinstein. Currently at the Comedy, Simon Gray’s play The Old Masters - directed by his long-time collaborator and fellow playwright Harold Pinter and starring Edward Fox and Peter Bowles - has extended its season to 18 December (See News, 16 Sep 2004). Premiered in Birmingham in June, it opened in the West End on 1 July 2004 (previews from 26 June) and had originally been scheduled to finish on 28 August.
- by Terri Paddock
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