Helen Mirren returns to the throne for new Peter Morgan play?
Helen Mirren, Oscar-winning star of
Stephen Frears‘s 2006 film, The Queen,
this week played Elizabeth II at a reading of a new play by Peter
Morgan, according to the Daily Mail. Morgan wrote the screenplay for
Frears’s film.
On
Tuesday evening Mirren returned to the character in a reading of
The Audience, a play about the monarch’s
relationships with her Prime Ministers. The Mail reports that the piece is “still a work in progress”.
The version read this week features Winston
Churchill, Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher, James Callaghan and John
Major, although Morgan has apparently not yet decided which
characters will ultimately feature in the finished play. Gordon Brown
and David Cameron are in the offing for inclusion.
Mirren
played the title role in Jean Racine’s Phèdre
at the National Theatre in 2009, the production that launched the
theatre’s NT Live scheme.
Billy Elliot The
Musical director Stephen Daldry is in negotiations to
direct
The Audience, which is it rumoured will open in the West End next
year.
Bob Crowley is in talks about designing the show.
