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Redgrave Brings Didion Magic to NT’s Bumper YearDate: 2 October 2007
Vanessa Redgrave (pictured) will recreate her Tony Award-nominated performance in Joan Didion’s one-woman play The Year of Magical Thinking, which will receive its UK premiere at the National Theatre in late spring 2008.
The American novelist’s first play is based on her autobiographical book of the same name about bereavement. John Gregory Dunne, Didion’s husband of 39 years, died in 2003, followed just two years later by their daughter. The stage adaptation of The Year of Magical Thinking premiered in March 2007 at Broadway’s Booth Theater, where it ran for five months and earned Redgrave a Best Actress nomination at this year’s Tonys (See News, 15 May 2007).
At a press briefing this morning to launch the National Theatre’s 2006-7 Annual Report (See Today’s Other News for report analysis and operational plans), artistic director Nicholas Hytner confirmed the production, which will run in rep in the NT Lyttelton, directed – as in New York – by British playwright David Hare. Hare is also writing a new drama of his own, which Hytner hopes will be ready to schedule next year as well. The untitled piece, which Hytner described as “a very big play”, will be directed by NT associate Howard Davies.
Though exact dates have not yet been set, other 2008 NT programme highlights revealed by Hytner today include: Hytner’s own revival of George Bernard Shaw’s 1905 play Major Barbara, which will launch the 2008 £10 Travelex Season in the NT Olivier; Samuel Adamson’s new version of Ibsen’s Little Eyolf, directed by Marianne Elliott (the pair previously teamed up for Ibsen’s Pillars of the Community); a new Tony Harrison play about the late classicist and poet Gilbert Murray; a premiere dance-based piece starring Juliette Binoche and created by choreographer Akram Khan, who will also play guitar and sing on stage for the first time; Melly Still’s production of Jacobean classic The Revenger’s Tragedy; and the first new play since Democracy by Michael Frayn, directed by his long-time collaborator Michael Blakemore.
The 2008 schedule will also include, as previously announced (See News, 12 Sep 2006), Jonathan Kent’s staging of Oedipus, starring Ralph Fiennes in the title role. Sophocles’ ancient Greek tragedy, about a man who kills his father and has sex with his mother, will run in the NT Olivier next autumn ahead of an international tour. “I think next year is going to be a really bumper year,” Hytner told journalists at today’s briefing.
- by Terri Paddock
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