Director Mendes Departs Donmar & Kidman Returns

Sam Mendes is set to leave the Donmar Warehouse at the end of next year
after a decade long stint at its helm, and will form an independent film and
theatre production company with his Donmar Executive Producer, Caro Newling.

Mendes is currently in the headlines, too, for the revelation that he is now
dating British movie star Kate Winslet. For his parting shot from the
theatre, he has signed Nicole Kidman to return to the theatre, where three
years ago she starred in his production of The Blue Room, and from
where it subsequently transferred to Broadway. This time, the plan is for
Mendes to direct a double-bill of Twelfth Night and Uncle
Vanya, performed in repertoire, with Kidman as Vioa and Yelena
respectively. Mendes has also lured Simon Russell Beale, who starred as
Iago in his National Theatre staging of Othello, to star as Malovolio
in Twelfth Night and the title role in Uncle Vanya. The plays
will run in repertoire from 5 September to November 30.

Prior to this, an American Imports season will see another hotshot
American movie star, Philip Seymour Hoffman – seen in Happiness,
Magnolia and The Talented Mr Ripley — make his London
directorial debut in March, recreating his acclaimed Off-Broadway staging of
Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train. The prison drama
was also seen at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. It will play alongside the
world premiere of Keith Reddin’s Frame 312, a play about the
assassination of John F Kennedy. (Mendes’s opening production at the Donmar
in 1992, of course, was Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s musical
Assassins, about presidential assassinations that included the
Kennedy one.) The plays will run in repertoire from 6-30 March.

Also lined up are two London premieres of plays previously seen in New York:
from off-Broadway, Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero arrives for a run
from 4 April to 4 May; and from Broadway, where it is still running at the
Walter Kerr Theatre, comes last year’s Tony winner for Best Play, David
Auburn’s Proof, will run from 9 May to 15 June. Then another American
writer, Richard Greenberg, will offer the world premiere of Take Me
Out, about an baseball hero who comes out as gay, running from 20 June
to 3 August. Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain was a hit at the Donmar; the
new play will be co-produced with New York’s Public Theatre and will,
subject to discussions with American and British Equity, feature an American
cast to open the play here prior to transferring it to New York.

August will see the 5th anniversary season of the annual Divas at the
Donmar cabaret series, with Philip Quast already announced to star.
Quast is currently about to star in the National Theatre’s staging of South
Pacific and was previously seen at the Donmar Warehouse in The Fix.

Michael Grandage, whose Donmar production of Privates on Parade previews
from 30 November prior to opening on December 10, is being heavily tipped to
replace Mendes, though the job will be publicly advertised.

– Mark Shenton