Thandie Newton will play Paulina Salas in Ariel Dorfman's Olivier award-winning thriller Death and the Maiden at the Comedy Theatre from Thursday 13th October 2011. Jeremy Herrin, Deputy Artistic Director of the Royal Court, will direct and the production will be designed by Peter McKintosh.
This will be the first London production of Dorfman's 1990 play since the world premiere at the Royal Court in 1991 which transferred to the West End in 1992 where it played for 12 months. Subsequently, the play was produced on Broadway and adapted into a film.
The play is an intense and thrilling account of confession and revenge set against the backdrop of a new democracy, emerging from a long period of dictatorship.
Thandie Newton will play a former political prisoner who suffered at the hands of a captor whose face she never saw, but whose voice and mannerisms she recalls with terrifying clarity. Years later, and as if by fate, she acts as judge and jury to a man she believes to have been her oppressor. She struggles to find a form of reconciliation for the experience that she and others, have endured.
Casting of the two male roles will be announced soon.
Thandie Newton was awarded a BAFTA for her role in Crash, Paul Haggis' Oscar-winning film about racial and social tensions in Los Angeles. She also starred in the title role in Beloved opposite Oprah Winfrey and in Mission Impossible II with Tom Cruise. She appeared in The Pursuit of Happyness with Will Smith and playEd Simon Pegg's ex-girlfriend in Run Fat Boy Run. She played Condoleezza Rice in Oliver Stone's W and the US President's daughter in 2012. She was most recently seen in Huge and is currently filming Good Deeds, written and directed by Tyler Perry, whom also stars.
Jeremy Herrin is the Deputy Artistic Director at the Royal Court where he has directed Polly Stenham's plays That Face and Tusk Tusk, David Hare's The Vertical Hour, Michael Wayne's The Priory, Richard Beane's The Heretic and other new writing. This year he made his Shakespearean debut directing the acclaimed production of Much Ado About Nothing at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre with Eve Best and Charles Edwards, and will direct South Downs at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester in September.
Tickets are on sale from Monday 25 July 2011 at 9am.
www.deathandthemaidentheplay.com
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