Pryce Does Donmar Dimetos, Anderson Doll Dates

Jonathan Pryce (pictured) will star in a revival of Athol Fugard’s rarely seen play Dimetos, as part of the new Donmar Warehouse season. The production, which runs from 25 March to 9 May 2009 (previews from 19 March) at the company’s Covent Garden base, is helmed by Donmar associate director Douglas Hodge.

Written in 1975, Dimetos is a moving story about love, guilt, retribution and faith in a modern world of moral decay. Exhausted with life in the city as a highly skilled engineer, Dimetos (Pryce) escapes to a remote coastal village with his niece and housekeeper in search of a simpler existence. Five years on, a stranger from the metropolis arrives to tempt him back with devastating consequences.

Pryce’s previous theatre credits include Glengarry Glen Ross, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (New York), The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? My Fair Lady and Oliver!. His film and TV credits include Baker Street, Victoria and Albert, Leatherheads, The Pirates of the Caribbean, Ronin, Tomorrow Never Dies and Carrington (for which he won best actor at the Cannes Film Festival). Further casting for Dimetos is yet to be confirmed.

Dates have also now been set for the Donmar’s previously announced revival of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, led by former X-Files star Gillian Anderson (See News, 27 Jun 2008). It will follow Dimetos, running 19 May to 18 July 2009 (previews from 14 May).

Nora (Anderson) 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. The production is directed by Kfir Yefet, who won the BAFTA for Best Short Film for It’s Not Unusual, and designed by Anthony Ward.

Ahead of the two newly scheduled productions for the next spring, the Donmar schedule now continues with (See News, 18 Apr 2008): August Strindberg’s rarely seen 1890 comic tale of obsession Creditors, in a new translation by David Grieg directed by actor Alan Rickman (25 September to 15 November); and, as part of a TS Eliot Festival, a revival of the author’s 1939 play The Family Reunion, starring Penelope Wilton and Samuel West and directed by Jeremy Herrin (20 November to 17 January); and, in a co-production with the National Theatre of Scotland, the world premiere staging of Scot Andrew O’Hagan’s Booker-longlisted 2006 novel Be Near Me, adapted by and starring Ian McDiarmid and directed by John Tiffany 22 January to 14 March).

The 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 opened triumphantly this week with Ivanov, starring Kenneth Branagh and continues, until August 2009, with: Twelfth Night, starring Derek Jacobi as Malvolio; Madame de Sade led by Judi Dench and Rosamund Pike; and Hamlet, starring Jude Law and directed by Branagh (See News, 10 Sep 2007). The Donmar will also soon be represented in the West End by the transfer of Jamie Lloyd’s production of Piaf, starring Elena Roger, to the Vaudeville Theatre next month (See News, 29 Aug 2008).

– by Theo Bosanquet & Terri Paddock