Joanna Lumley Stars in Lion in Winter for Nunn???

Joanna Lumley is reportedly gearing up to return to the London stage to play Eleanor of Aquitaine in the belated West End premiere of The Lion in Winter. James Goldman’s 1966 Broadway play, about the 12th-century queen who returns to court after being imprisoned by her husband King Henry II for ten years, was famously made into a 1968 film starring Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole. It was revived on Broadway in 1999 in a production starring Hollywood’s Laurence Fishburne as Henry and Stockard Channing as Eleanor. It has never been mounted in the West End. The new production is tipped to be directed by Trevor Nunn and may be the final offering in Nunn’s year-long season at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, following The Tempest, which stars Ralph Fiennes as the sorcerer Prospero and runs from 6 September to 29 October 2011 (previews from 27 August).