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Cast: Spider Glen, That Duncan Face, Back to BlackDate: 9 March 2007
Two-time Olivier Award winner Lindsay Duncan (pictured) next month returns to the London stage for the first time in six years to star in the world premiere of That Face, Polly Stenham’s debut play, which runs at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs from 23 April to 19 May 2007 (previews from 20 April).
Mia is at boarding school. She has access to drugs. They are Martha’s. Henry is preparing for art college. He has access to alcohol. From Martha. Martha (Duncan) controls their lives. Martha is their mother.
Duncan won Best Actress Oliviers for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s original production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses and for her most recent stage role, the 2001 West End revival of Private Lives, which also scooped her accolades at the Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle awards, and for its Broadway transfer, the Tony Awards. At the Royal Court, she’s previously appeared in Mouth to Mouth, Ashes to Ashes and Top Girls.
Duncan is joined in That Face by Felicity Jones (Emma Carter in The Archers) and Matt Smith (Burn/Chatroom/Citizenship, The History Boys, On the Shore of the Wide World). The premiere production is directed Jeremy Herrin and designed by Mike Britton.
Iain Glen will join Rupert Evans in the upcoming Donmar Warehouse revival of Kiss of the Spider Woman, Allan Baker’s translation of Argentine Manuel Puig’s play about inmates in a Latin American jail, which opens on 25 April 2007 (previews from 19 April) for a run to 26 May (See News, 23 Feb 2007).
When two men are forced to share a cell, an unlikely relationship is formed. Valentin (Evans) is a young Marxist rebel punished for his ideals, Molina (Glen) a middle-aged man condemned for his sexuality. Molina reinvents stories of films he loves, including the one of the title, and the cynical Valentin listens. Valentin believes in the just cause which makes all suffering bearable. Molina believes in the magic of love which makes all else endurable. Each has always been alone, and always - especially now - in danger of betrayal.
Glen was most recently seen in Dominic Cooke’s RSC production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (which won two Oliviers, including Best Revival, this year) in Stratford and the West End. His many other stage credits include Hedda Gabler at the Almeida, The Blue Room at the Donmar, A Streetcar Named Desire at the National, Martin Guerre at the Prince Edward, and Henry V at the RSC.
Kiss of the Spider Woman was first performed by Simon Callow and Mark Rylance at west London’s Bush Theatre in 1985. The subsequent film won its star William Hurt a Best Actor Oscar, while Kander and Ebb’s 1993 Broadway musical version, with a book by Terrence McNally, won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The Donmar production is directed by Charlotte Westenra and designed by Ben Stones with lighting by Hartley TA Kemp and sound by John Leonard. After its dates at the Donmar, Kiss of the Spider Woman will tour to Liverpool, Bristol and Salford, where it concludes on 16 June 2007.
Finally, Michael Burrell and Dominic Marsh have taken over this week in West End long-runner The Woman in Black, the chilling horror story adapted by Stephen Mallatratt from the book by Susan Hill. The ghostly two-hander, which has now been running at the Fortune Theatre for 18 years, tells the tale of a mysterious woman in black, who brings death and misery to anyone who crosses her path.
Burrell’s stage credits include The Mousetrap and The Invisible Man, as well as EastEnders, Kavanagh QC and The Uninvited on television. Marsh has appeared in The Taming of the Shrew, Cymbeline, HMS Pinafore, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Oh What a Lovely War and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Regents Park, Longitude at Greenwich, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for the RSC.
The Woman in Black, which has now been seen by more than three million people, is directed by Robin Herford, designed by Michael Holt and lit by Kevin Sleep.
- by Caroline Ansdell & Terri Paddock
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