West End Audience crowns new Queen before Broadway?

Peter Morgan‘s The Audience could be Broadway-bound, according to the Daily Mail. Helen Mirren, who returns to the role of Queen Elizabeth II following her Oscar-winning performance in Morgan’s film The Queen, told columnist Baz Bamigboye that she is keen to accompany the production to the US next spring.

In the meantime, the sell-out run at the West End’s Gielgud Theatre must finish on 15 June 2013 (making way for the Chichester revival of Private Lives in July), and, while Mirren’s schedule won’t allow for any extension, she told the Mail that she has encouraged producers to move The Audience to another theatre with a new actress in the lead.

The play, directed by Stephen Daldry, imagines a series of pivotal meetings between various Downing Street incumbents and the Queen. Other current cast members include Edward Fox as Winston Churchill, Michael Elwyn as Anthony Eden, Haydn Gwynne as Margaret Thatcher, Richard McCabe as Harold Wilson, Nathaniel Parker as Gordon Brown, Paul Ritter as John Major and Rufus Wright as David Cameron.