Fiennes Plays Prospero for Nunn at Haymarket

Ralph Fiennes will return to the London stage for the first time in three years to play Prospero in Trevor Nunn’s production of The Tempest, which will run as part of Nunn’s year-long artistic directorship of the Theatre Royal  Haymarket from 27 August 2011.

According to the Daily Mail’s Baz Bamigboye, the production will run for ten weeks, with other casting still to be announced.

Nunn’s tenure at the helm of the Haymarket began earlier this month (14 March, previews from 4 March) with his critically-acclaimed revival of Terence Rattigan’s Flare Path, starring Sienna Miller.

Ralph Fiennes was last on the London stage in 2008 when he played the title role in Jonathan Kent’s National Theatre production of Oedipus, in which he starred alongside Clare Higgins and Alan Howard.

His other stage credits include God of Carnage, Deborah Warner’s epic staging of Julius Caesar at the Barbican, Brand, Coriolanus, Richard II and the so-called Hackney Hamlet, which transferred to Broadway, where he has also appeared in Faith Healer.

His many films include the recent Coriolanus (which he also directed), Cemetery Junction, The Reader, In Bruges, The Constant Gardener, The English Patient, Schindler’s List, Harry Potter, Quiz Show and the new James Bond film, which he’ll begin shooting after The Tempest.

Rosencrantz And Guildenstern transfers

The Tempest will be preceded by, as previously rumoured, the transfer of Nunn’s Chichester Festival Theatre production of Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, which runs at the Haymarket from  from 16 June to 20 August 2011.

Stoppard’s famous debut play retells Hamlet through the eyes of two of its minor characters, and runs in Chichester from 31 May to 11 June (previews from 20 May). The Mail reports that former History Boys Samuel Barnett and Jamie Parker are in negotiations to star.

Currently at the Haymarket, Flare Path, which also stars James Purefoy and Sheridan Smith, continues until 4 June 2011.