Theatre News

Cast: Ruth Wilson Leads Darkly, Bush Eigengrau

| London's West End |

12 February 2010

Ruth Wilson, who last year starred alongside Rachel Weisz in the award-winning Donmar revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, will lead the cast in the Almeida Theatre’s forthcoming stage adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s 1961 Oscar-winning film Through a Glass Darkly.

According to the Daily Mail, Wilson, who rose to fame playing the title role in the BBC’s adaptation of Jane Eyre (2006), has been attached to the production since last year, when she went to Sweden with director Michael Attenborough to perform in a workshop of the play.

Adapted by Andrew Upton (who translated Philistines at the NT in 2007, which starred Wilson), Through a Glass Darkly concerns Karin (Wilson), a young schizophrenic woman who is taken on a recuperative holiday to a bleakly beautiful island, where the relations between herself and three male family members become increasingly entangled.

Through a Glass Darkly runs from 16 June to 31 July (previews from 10 June), and is preceded at the Almeida by the European premiere of Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Ruined, which stars Jenny Jules and Lucian Msamati (See News, 29 Jan 2010).

In other casting news, Laurence Fox will star in the premiere of Penelope Skinner’s black comedy Eigengrau at the Bush Theatre, directed by Polly Findlay.

The play, which runs from 15 March to 10 April 2010 (previews from 10 March), examines the lives of four young professionals, living in London and struggling to find meaningful connections or make any impact in a city where Gumtree and Facebook often feel like their closest friends.

Starring alongside Fox, whose screen credits include Gosford Park, Becoming Jane and TV detective drama Lewis, are John Cummins (The Good Soul of Szechuan), Sinead Matthews (Women of Troy) and Alison O’Donnell (Dolls).