Countess Premieres at Guildford Ahead of West EndDate: 29 March 2005
As previously tipped (See The Goss, 3 Mar 2005), New York hit The Countess will receive its UK premiere this spring. The play opens for a limited season from 4 to 14 May 2005 at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford, ahead of an anticipated West End transfer.
A long-running hit Off-Broadway, where it had more than 600 performances at multiple venues before finishing in December 2000, Gregory Murphy’s drama recounts a real-life love scandal.
In Victorian London society, when his wife Effie sued art critic John Ruskin for divorce on the grounds that their marriage had never been consummated, she was ostracised. Later, the involvement of another man - John Everett Millais, a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite movement – in the love triangle was revealed. Who is the woman who one man calls mad and the other calls … The Countess.
Jean Boht (TV’s Bread) and Linda Thorson (The Constant Wife, TV’s The Avengers) star in the UK premiere production, which is directed by Ludovica Villar-Hauser and designed by Tim Goodchild, with costumes by Christopher Lione and music by Dewey Dellay. No venue or dates have yet been announced for the play’s planned West End season.
- by Terri Paddock
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