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Redgrave Reads Ensler Necessary Targets, 10 Oct

Vanessa Redgrave (pictured) will lead the all-female cast in a rehearsed reading of Necessary Targets, American playwright Eve Ensler’s follow-up to the multi award-winning The Vagina Monologues. The reading, directed by actress-cum-director Anna Carteret (See 20 Questions, 2 Aug 2004), will take place at the West End’s Arts Theatre on Sunday 10 October 2004.

In her first new work since ‘The Vagina Monologues’, her Award-winning smash hit, Eve Ensler tells the story of two American women, a Park Avenue psychiatrist and a human rights worker, who go to Bosnia to help women confront their memories of war and emerge deeply changed themselves. In Necessary Targets, Redgrave plays J S, a successful but unsatisfied Park Avenue psychiatrist, who has nothing in common with ambitious young writer Melissa, except a method of keeping a distance from other people. Together, they go to Bosnia to help women confront their memories of war and both are deeply changed.

Redgrave is currently appearing on screen on Channel 4 in US plastic surgery serial Nip/Tuck. Her most recent stage credits include The Cherry Orchard, Song at Twilight and The Tempest in London and, in New York, A Long Day’s Journey into Night, for which she won last year’s Tony Award for Best Actress (See News, 9 Jun 2003). In February 2005, she will return to the Royal Shakespeare Company for the first time in 40 years to take the title role in Hecuba, which will transfer to the West End and Washington DC after its initial dates in Stratford (See News, 29 Mar 2004).

In Necessary Targets, Redgrave will be joined by Susannah Wise (Three Sisters) as Melissa, Paula Wilcox, Caroline John, Stella Maris, Zoe Waites and the director Carteret’s daughter Hattie Morahan (Iphigenia at Aulis).

Necessary Targets has previously been performed in New York in 2001 by Meryl Streep, Angelica Huston and Calista Flockhart, and in Sarajevo with Glenn Close and Marisa Tomei. All proceeds from the West End performance will go to the International Committee for Artists’ Freedom, which is committed to assisting those unable to work in their own countries for political reasons.

- by Terri Paddock

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