Knightley & Mad’s Peggy Star in Children’s Hour

As previously tipped, Keira Knightley will return to the West End stage next year in a revival of Lillian Hellman‘s 1934 play The Children’s Hour.

Knightley, along with American screen star Elisabeth Moss, aka the lascivious Peggy Olson in TV’s Mad Men – will star as teachers at a girls’ boarding school in the new production, directed by Ian Rickson, which is scheduled to open 9 February, following previews from 22 January, at the West End’s Comedy Theatre, where Knightley made her Olivier-nominated stage debut last December in The Misanthrope.

In the play, the teachers are accused by a disgruntled student of having a lesbian relationship – an accusation that subsequently ruins the women’s careers and lives.

The Children’s Hour was last produced in London by the National Theatre in 1994 in a production. Lillian Hellman’s other plays include The Dark Angel, Watch on the Rhine, The Autumn Garden and, her best-known work, The Little Foxes, which was also made into a 1941 film starring Bette Davis.

The Children’s Hour will be the first new production for former Royal Court artistic director Ian Rickson since his success with Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, which transferred to the West End at the start of this year after premiering at the Royal Court last autumn. It picked up Best New Play awards at this past year’s Evening Standard, Critics’ Circle and Whatsonstage.com Awards and is Broadway-bound next year.

Knightley made her professional stage debut in The Misanthrope, starring alongside Damian Lewis, and was nominated for an Olivier for Best Supporting Actress for her performance. She’s become a household name internationally for the blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy as well as films including Atonement, The Duchess, The Edge of Love, Domino, The Jacket, Love Actually, Bend It Like Beckham and Never Let Me Go.

Moss, who will make her West End debut in The Children’s Hour, has received both Emmy and SAG Award nominations for her role in television series Mad Men and is also well known for having played the role of Zoe Bartlett in The West Wing. She made her Broadway debut in the 2008 production of David Mamet’s Speed the Plow.

The Children’s Hour is produced in the West End by Sonia Friedman Productions and Scott Landis.