Francesca Annis has been cast in Rupert Goold’s debut production at the National Theatre, Time And The Conways, which opens in the Lyttelton on 5 May.
Also confirmed in next year’s season are Toby Jones, Joseph Millson, Anastasia Hille and Michelle Dockery.
Annis, who plays Mrs Conway in J B Priestley’s Time And The Conways, was last seen on the London stage in Under The Blue Sky at the Duke of York’s theatre earlier this year. Her other recent credits include Epitaph For George Dillon at the Comedy theatre, Henry IV and The Vortex at the Donmar Warehouse and Mrs Klein at the National Theatre. Further back, her work with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) resulted in a Laurence Olivier Award nomination in 1977 for Troilus And Cressida. Following an early appearance alongside Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra, her screen work has included films Krull, Under The Cherry Moon, Onegin and Reckless, and recent television series Wives And Daughters and Cranford.
Jones and Millson join the cast of Tom Stoppard and André Previn’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favour in the Olivier from 16 January. Jones’s burgeoning film career includes recent offerings Amazing Grace, Infamous, St Trinian’s, Frost/Nixon and W. His stage work includes the Kenneth Branagh-directed The Play What I Wrote, for which he won a Laurence Olivier Award in 2002, and The Walls and Measure For Measure for the National Theatre. Millson’s stage credits include playing Benedick to Tamsin Greig’s Beatrice in the RSC’s Much Ado About Nothing at the Novello theatre, and Cinderella at the Old Vic.
Hille takes the title role in Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen Of Carthage, directed by James Macdonald in the Cottesloe from 24 March. Hille has frequently worked at the National with roles in Women Of Troy, Waves, A Dream Play, Macbeth, Marat/Sade and Richard III. Her West End appearances include The Dark, Morphic Resonance and Three Tall Women. She is soon to be seen in forthcoming film Good.
Dockery joins the already cast Ciarán Hinds and Rory Kinnear in Peter Flannery’s Burnt By The Sun, which Howard Davies directs in the Lyttelton next March. Guildhall School graduate Dockery received critical acclaim earlier this year for her portrayal of Eliza Doolittle in Peter Hall’s production of Shaw’s Pygmalion at the Old Vic. She has previously appeared at the National in The UN Inspector, Pillars Of The Community and His Dark Materials.
CB