Helen Mirren Stars in Collected Stories

Helen Mirren, last seen in London in the National Theatre’s production of Antony and Cleopatra (playing Cleopatra to Alan Rickman’s Antony), returns to the West End next month in a new production of the off-Broadway play Collected Stories. It opens at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket on November 15 (following previews from November 10), and runs to February 5, 2000. Prior to London, it will tour to Malvern’s Festival Theatre, Bath’s Theatre Royal (October 18-23), Cambridge’s Arts Theatre (October 25-30) and Guildford’s Yvonne Arnaud Theatre (November 1-6).

In the play, originally seen at the Lucille Lortel Theatre with Uta Hagen, Mirren plays Ruth Steiner, a short-story writer who becomes mentor to a budding fiction writer, Lisa. Written by Donald Marguelies, who is about to be represented off-Broadway by the arrival of his latest play, Dinner with Friends at the Variety Arts, the play also stars Anne-Marie Duff and is directed by Howard Davies, who most recently directed The Iceman Cometh, starring Kevin Spacey, for the Almeida Theatre and subsequently on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson.

Mark Shenton