Josie Rourke will direct Dominic West, Michelle Dockery and Janet McTeer in a new revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses as part of the Donmar Warehouse’s forthcoming autumn season.
The tale of sex, intrigue and betrayal will be the final production to open in the three-show season, following Robert Hastie’s revival of Abi Morgan’s Splendour starring Sinéad Cusack and the UK premiere of Teddy Ferrara directed by Dominic Cooke.
The season opener, Splendour, will run from 30 July to 26 September. The devastating play tells the story of a Western photojournalist awaiting the arrival of a dictator alongside his wife, her best friend and an interpreter in the opulent drawing room of the Presidential Palace.
Stage and screen star Cusack, who was last seen on the London stage in Other Desert Cities at The Old Vic, is joined by a cast including Game Of Thrones’ Michelle Fairley (Othello, Donmar Warehouse), Zawe Ashson (Narrative, Royal Court) and Genevieve O’Reilly (The Doctor’s Dilemma, National Theatre).
From 1 October to 5 December, former Royal Court Artistic Director Cooke will direct a cast including Nancy Crane, Oliver Johnstone and Luke Newberry in Christopher Shinn’s insightful and revealing play Teddy Ferrara.
Inspired by real events, the story follows Gabe, the chair of the LGBT Students Group, as he and his friends throw themselves into campus life, before unexpected events lead them to encounter a darker, lonelier world inhabited by freshman Teddy Ferrara.
Newberry (Antigone, NT) makes his Donmar Warehouse debut as Gabe. Alongside Crane (Chimerica, Almeida) and Johnstone (RSC’s Oppenheimer), the cast will include Kadiff Kirwan (The Vote, Donmar), Matthew Marsh (A Human Being Died That Night, Hampstead Theatre), Anjli Mohindra (Behind The Beautiful Forevers, NT), Pamela Nomvete (Belong, Royal Court) and Nathan Wiley. Ryan McParland makes his Donmar Warehouse debut as the title character.
Rourke’s production of Christopher Hampton’s Olivier Award-winning stage adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses will then close the season, playing from 11 December to 13 February.
Best known for her role as Lady Mary in ITV period drama Downton Abbey, Dockery will make her Donmar Warehouse debut as Madame de Tourvel, returning to the London stage for the first time since her 2009 performance in the National Theatre’s Burnt By The Sun.
Olivier Award winner McTeer and The Wire star West return to the Donmar Warehouse to play the Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont respectively. McTeer, who picked up her prestigious prize for A Doll’s House in 1997, was last seen at the venue in 2005’s Mary Stuart, while West, whose recent credits include The River at the Royal Court, returns following his critically acclaimed performance in Life Is A Dream.
Based on Choderlos de Laclos’ scandalous 1782 novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses follows two former lovers as they compete in games of seduction and revenge, toying with other people’s hearts and reputations before realising that their own may be more fragile that they supposed.
In addition to the trio of productions, the venue has also announced the appointment of Phyllida Lloyd, whose production of Henry IV transfers to New York this autumn, as a new Associate Director and The Vote playwright James Graham as an Associate Artist.
Prior to the new season, audiences will once again have the chance to see the Donmar Warehouse’s 2013 hit, the Tom Hiddleston-led Coriolanus, via NT Live Encore screenings. It will be available to UK cinemagoers from 24 September and to international audiences from 12 November.