Donmar’s Schiller Thriller Conquers Broadway???

The Donmar Warehouse’s award-winning 2005 production of German playwright Friedrich Schiller’s 1800 romantic tragedy Mary Stuart is being dusted off for a Broadway transfer in 2009. It will open next spring at a still-to-be-announced Shubert theatre with British leading ladies Janet McTeer and Harriet Walter confirmed to reprise their roles as Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth I, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, currently riding high with the film version of Mamma Mia!.

The production first opened at the Donmar in July 2005 and then transferred that October for a limited three-month season at the West End’s Apollo Theatre (See News, 24 Aug 2005). On Broadway, it will mark the first revival of Mary Stuart in almost 40 years, and the second transatlantic Donmar transfer under the artistic directorship of Michael Grandage, following the success last year of Frost/Nixon.

The transfer also provides New York theatregoers with an opportunity to see McTeer and Walter in action after long absences. McTeer has not appeared on the New York stage since her Tony Award-winning 1997 turn in A Doll’s House, while Walter returns after a 25-year absence, last seen in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1983 production of All’s Well That Ends Well.