Sienna Miller Flare Launches Nunn at Haymarket

Trevor Nunn will launch his long-rumoured stint as artistic director of the West End’s Theatre Royal Haymarket in March by directing Sienna Miller in Terence Rattigan’s Flare Path. The play will open on 10 March (previews from 4 March) and run until 4 June 2011.

Although the rest of Nunn’s Haymarket season – and full casting for the upcoming production – is still to be announced the Daily Mail today (21 January) reported the season will contain “one of Shakespeare’s late plays; an early Stoppard; and Stephen Sondheim’s Follies” over the course of 12 months.

In Flare Path, Miller, who last appeared in the West End in 2005 as Celia in As You Like It, will play Patricia Graham, a former actress caught up in a love triangle during World War II.

Flare Path is one of a number of Rattigan plays being revived this year to mark the playwright’s centenary. According to the Mail‘s Baz Bamigboye, “producer Matthew Byam Shaw and Theatre Royal executives had been discussing the production with Nunn for some time, but once the director zeroed in on Sienna the play was fast-forwarded.”

Set in the Falcon Hotel, on the edge of an RAF airfield in Lincolnshire, Flare Path centres on the love triangle between pilot Teddy, his wife Patricia and her former lover, a film actor. Inspired by Rattigan’s own wartime experiences at Bomber Command, it premiered at the Apollo Theatre in 1942 and was subsequently adapted into the film The Way to the Stars.

Since appearing in As You Like It at Wyndham’s Theatre in 2005, which marked her professional stage debut, Sienna Miller has also starred in After Miss Julie, which opened on Broadway in 2009. She was due to appear in the Old Vic’s 24 Hour Plays Gala last November, but subsequently withdrew. Her myriad film credits include Layer Cake, Alfie (opposite her boyfriend Jude Law), Factory Girl, Stardust and The Edge of Love.

Trevor Nunn brings plenty of experience his new role, being former artistic director of both the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. He’s the latest director to take on responsibility for the Theatre Royal Haymarket Company, following Jonathan Kent and Sean Mathias. Currently at the venue, Peter Hall’s production of The Rivals continues until 26 February 2011.

Flare Path is produced by Matthew Byam Shaw for Playful Productions, Tom McKitterick and the Theatre Royal Haymarket Company in association with Act Productions Ltd.