Angela Lansbury Makes London Stage Comeback???

While octogenarian and multiple Tony Award winner Angela Lansbury was born in London, she hasn’t appeared on stage here since starring as Gertrude in Peter Hall’s 1976 production of Hamlet – but that doesn’t mean she might not do so again. According to the Daily Telegraph, she’s keen to make a comeback here – “New York may be her home,” a friend of Lansbury’s told the newspaper, “but her heart is still in London.” She was approached to appear as psychic Madame Arcati in Thea Sharrock’s upcoming revival of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit in the West End, but turned it down because she just played the same role in a 2009 Broadway revival. (The part has gone instead to Alison Steadman.)

Since being Oscar nominated for her first film role in 1944’s Gaslight, playing the conniving maid to Ingrid Bergman, Lansbury has balanced her many film and television roles – not least her long-running success in Murder, She Wrote – with regular forays on Broadway, where she’s won no fewer than five Tonys, for Mame, Dear World, Gypsy, Sweeney Todd and last year’s Blithe Spirit. She was nominated again this year for Trevor Nunn’s Menier Chocolate Factory revival of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, in which she co-starred with Catherine Zeta-Jones.