Gillian Anderson Enters 2009 Donmar Doll’s House

The X-Files star Gillian Anderson (pictured) will return to the stage next year in a new production of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, which is confirmed for a limited spring season at the Donmar Warehouse, though exact dates are still to be announced.

Nora thought she had the perfect life until a ghost from the past returns, and makes her realise she’s stuck in a suffocating marriage. The Donmar’s new version of Ibsen’s 1879 classic is written by Zinnie Harris.

Gillian Anderson is best known as FBI Special Agent Dana Scully in TV’s cult sci-fi hit The X-Files, which finished filming its ninth and final series in 2003; while her film credits include The X-Files Movie, The Last King of Scotland, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, The House of Mirth and Playing by Heart.

Anderson made her West End debut in 2002 in the world premiere of Michael Weller’s two-hander What the Night Is For alongside Roger Allam, for which she won a Whatsonstage.com Award. Her last London stage appearance was in 2004 in another premiere, Rebecca Gilman’s The Sweetest Swing in Baseball, at the Royal Court. Before her screen success, Anderson trained as a stage actress in the US, where her theatre credits have included The Philanthropist and The Vagina Monologues.

Zinnie Harris’ playwriting credits include Further Than the Furthest Thing, Solstice, Midwinter, By Many Wounds and Nightingale and Chase. A Doll’s House will be directed by Kfir Yefet, who won the BAFTA for Best Short Film for It’s Not Unusual.

The current Donmar autumn/winter season takes programming through to 14 March 2009 with the conclusion of the London run of Ian McDiarmid’s premiere adaptation of Scot Andrew O’Hagan’s Booker-longlisted 2006 novel Be Near Me, in a co-production with the National Theatre of Scotland (See News, 18 Apr 2008).

A Doll’s House and other programming at the Donmar’s Covent Garden home runs simultaneously with the theatre’s even higher-profile year-long West End residency at Wyndham’s Theatre, which runs from September 2008 to August 2009, and comprises: Ivanov, starring Kenneth Branagh; Twelfth Night, with Derek Jacobi as Malvolio; Madame de Sade led by Judi Dench; and Hamlet, starring Jude Law and directed by Branagh (See News, 10 Sep 2007).

– by Terri Paddock