Gossip

Shakespeare in Love Crosses Over to Stage???

Any chance that Joseph Fiennes might be persuaded to recreate his role as the cheeky Bard from Shakespeare in Love on stage? We’d certainly pay money to see that – particularly with the added prospect of seeing him sing and dance to boot. The casting is pure fantasy (or is it?), but we hear the possibility of a stage musical adaptation of the Oscar-winning 1998 film comedy is for real, care of producer Sonia Friedman, who’s bringing another screen-to-stage musical, Legally Blonde, to the West End later this year (See The Goss, 16 Mar 2009).

In the screen version of Shakespeare in Love, written by playwright Tom Stoppard, Fiennes played Will Shakespeare, who is suffering writer’s block while working on what will become Romeo and Juliet. A young actor who has been cast to play Romeo is actually a noblewoman named Viola (played by Gwyneth Paltrow), who has had to disguise herself as it’s against the law for women to perform on stage. Author and actor fall in love and their passionate, but doomed, love affair inspires Shakespeare’s writing of his great tragedy.

The film, directed by John Madden, won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actress for Paltrow and Best Supporting Actress for Judi Dench, who made a cameo appearance as Queen Elizabeth.