Award-winning actress Anne-Marie Duff is to make her first stage appearance since the birth of her first child when she opens in the Old Vic production of Rattigan’s Cause Célèbre in March 2011.
The former star of TV drama Shameless, who won multiple awards for her 2007 performance in the National Theatre production of Saint Joan, is to play Alma Rattenbury, a woman put on trial for the violent killing of her husband in 1935. Condemned more by the public for her seduction of an 18-year-old lover than for any involvement she may have had in her husband’s death, Rattenbury’s fate is left in the hands of a socially and sexually repressed jury forewoman.
Directed by Thea Sharrock, Cause Célèbre marks the centenary of playwright Terence Rattigan’s birth. Sharrock, who has a wealth of London credits including The Misanthrope, Equus, Heroes and A Voyage Round My Father, directed another of Rattigan’s plays, After The Dance, at the National Theatre earlier this year, receiving much acclaim.
Duff, who is married to British film star James McAvoy, is widely regarded as one of the finest actresses of her generation, with screen performances including Elizabeth I in Elizabeth – The Virgin Queen, Nowhere Boy and The Last Station. On stage, she received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Collected Stories and an Ian Charleson Award nomination for her performance as Cordelia in the Richard Eyre-directed production of King Lear at the National Theatre.
Cause Célèbre is the third production in the Old Vic’s 2010/11 season, following Noël Coward’s unconventional romantic comedy Design For Living, which plays until the end of November, and Georges Feydeau’s classic farce A Flea In Her Ear, which runs from December until March.
MA