Gillian Anderson returns to the UK stage to play Nora in A Doll’s House at the Donmar Warehouse in the spring of next year.
Exact dates are yet to be announced for this production of Ibsen’s classic, which will be staged in a new version by Zinnie Harris, directed by Kfir Yefet in his Donmar debut.
Ibsen’s 1879 play was controversial in its time due to its perceived criticism of traditional gender roles in marriage and its feminist bent. When banker Torvald Helmer discovers his wife Nora, whom he treats as a doll, has secretly supported him financially through a loan she took out without his knowledge, his outraged reaction leads Nora to reassess their life together.
Anderson is best known for her role in the long-running sci-fi series The X-Files, in which she starred as agent Dana Scully alongside David Duchovny’s Fox Mulder. Her credits on the UK stage include What The Night Is For at the Comedy in 2002 and The Sweetest Swing In Baseball at the Royal Court in 2004. In addition to The X-Files, Anderson has appeared on screen in Bleak House, The Last King Of Scotland and How To Lose Friends And Alienate People.
Playwright Harris’s other work includes Solstice, Midwinter (Royal Shakespeare Company), Nightingale And Chase (Royal Court) and Further From The Furthest Thing (National Theatre and Tricycle).
In other Donmar news, the full cast has been announced for the forthcoming production of Pam Gems’s Piaf (8 August-20 September, press night 13 August).
Joining Elena Roger in the title role are Shane Attwooll, Phillip Browne, Lorraine Bruce, Luke Evans, Michael Hadley, Katherine Kingsley, Leon Lopez, Stuart Neal and Steve John Shepherd.
Attwooll was last seen at the Almeida in The Last Days Of Judas Iscariot and has credits including Glengarry Glen Ross and Death Of A Salesman. Browne appeared in Carmen Jones at the Royal Festival Hall last year. Bruce was seen in Bad Girls The Musical at the Garrick, Vernon God Little at the Young Vic and A Model Girl a the Greenwich. Evans returns to the Donmar following his appearance in the recent production of Small Change; he was previously seen in Rent Remixed at the Duke of York’s. Hadley (Othello, The Vortex) and Neal (Nine) are also Donmar alumni, while Lopez starred alongside Evans in Rent Remixed. Kingsley was recently seen in Black And White Ball at the King’s Head, and Shepherd appeared in last year’s Five Wives Of Maurice Pinder at the National Theatre.
Jamie Lloyd directs Piaf, which follows the current production of The Chalk Garden in to the Donmar.
CB