Friends Schwimmer Debuts LaBute's Girls, 24 MayDate: 24 February 2005
UPDATED, 3.30pm: This story has been updated with further creative team details about the new production.
As previously tipped (See The Goss, 23 Feb & 24 Jan 2005), David Schwimmer (pictured), best known for his ten years as palaeontologist Ross Geller in American TV sitcom Friends, will make his West End debut this spring Neil LaBute’s new play Some Girls. The premiere production, directed by David Grindley, will have a limited 13-week season at the Gielgud Theatre, where it runs from 24 May to 13 August 2005 (previews from 12 May).
Schwimmer, the one and only male in the five-strong cast, will play a womaniser about to become engaged. Before he succumbs to commitment, he pays visits to four former girlfriends, with not altogether pleasant consequences. At one point, LaBute’s working title for the piece was Some Girls Who I Fucked Over.
Though internationally famous for his role in Friends, which finished last year, Schwimmer has a long association with acting and directing for the stage. After studying at Northwestern University, he co-founded the Looking Glass Theater Company in Chicago. On screen, his additional acting credits have included Uprising, Band of Brothers, Apt Pupil, Hotel, The Wonder Years, NYPD Blue, A Deadly Silence, Breast Men and The Pallbearer. He’s also directed episodes of both Friends and Joey, the spin-off sitcom starring Matt LeBlanc.
Schwimmer, of course, won’t be the first Friends star to tread the boards in the West End. At the Comedy Theatre in 2003, Matthew Perry starred with Minnie Driver in a revival of, the seemingly similarly themed, Sexual Perversity in Chicago by American David Mamet, to whom the younger LaBute is often likened.
Director Grindley's other credits include Abigail's Party, Journey's End and, currently at the Old Vic starring Kevin Spacey, National Anthems. The production is designed by Jonathan Fensom with lighting by Jason Taylor. Some Girls is produced in the West End by Out of the Blue. The production will overlap with another LaBute premiere in London. The American dramatist’s new play about race and infidelity, This Is How It Goes, will run at the Donmar Warehouse from 31 May to 9 July 2005 (See News, 8 Nov 2004).
Meanwhile, currently at the Gielgud Theatre, the Sheffield Crucible transfer of Don Carlos, starring Derek Jacobi and Richard Coyle, continues its limited season until 30 April 2005.
- by Terri Paddock
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