1st Night Photos: Blanchett Rocks up to Riflemind

The Philip Seymour Hoffman helmed production of Andrew Upton’s Riflemind received its European premiere at the Trafalgar Studios last night (18 September 2008, previews from 15 September), attended by guests including Upton’s wife Cate Blanchett and Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes.

Riflemind had its world premiere in Sydney in October 2007, directed by Hoffman. It tells the story of John, once the frontman for one of the world’s biggest bands, Riflemind. Now John and his wife Lynn are safe from the world in their walled country house. Money and anonymity, however, won’t protect them from themselves or their past. As a comeback tour nears, the band, associated spouses, lovers and hangers-on reunite for a rock’n’roll circus of a weekend.

Scottish stage and screen actor John Hannah (whose credits include the films Four Weddings and a Funeral, Sliding Doors and The Mummy series and, on stage, The Mercy Seat) plays the part of John, originally played by Hugo Weaving. He’s joined by fellow Brit Paul Hilton (Rosmersholm, The Wild Duck, Mourning Becomes Electra on stage) and original Australian cast members Susan Prior (as John’s wife Lynn), Steve Rodgers and Jeremy Sims.

TO SCROLL THROUGH ALL OF RIFLEMIND‘s 1st NIGHT PHOTOS,
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PHOTOS BY DAN WOOLLER FOR WHATSONSTAGE.COM.

For 1st Night Photos, our Whatsonstage.com photographer Dan Wooller was on hand for the curtain call at Trafalgar Studios 1 and the post-show party at the Kingly Club, along with the company and other first night guests including Cate Blanchett, Nick Rhodes, Eddie Marsan, Imogen Lloyd Webber and Emilia Fox.

Director Philip Seymour Hoffman is best known internationally as an actor from Hollywood films such as The Savages, Charlie Wilson’s War, Cold Mountain, Almost Famous, Magnolia, The Talented Mr Ripley, Boogie Nights and Capote, for which he won a Best Actor Oscar. On stage, he’s appeared in the Broadway productions of Long Day’s Journey into Night and True West and has, for many years, been the co-artistic director of New York’s LAByrinth Theater Company, which recently announced a new collaboration with Blanchett’s Sydney Theatre Company (STC) and the Trafalgar Studios (See News, 15 Sep 2008).

– by Theo Bosanquet