You might think preparing to star in a play written by your wife would be stressful. The pressure of performing words written by the person you are closest to in the world, desperately wanting to make them sound as polished and complete as they possibly can be, fearing that maybe your performance won’t do them justice. From the look of these rehearsal shots, it doesn’t appear Adrian Lester is suffering from any such worries.
The Olivier Award-winning actor is currently preparing to play groundbreaking actor Ira Aldridge, a young black American who stepped in to replace the great Edmund Kean as Othello in 1833, in Red Velvet, which is written by his wife Lolita Chakrabarti.
From the smile on his face in the pictures taken by photographer Tristram Kenton, and on that of director Indhu Rubasingham, one can only assume that rehearsals for the drama, which begins it run at the Tricycle theatre on 11 October, is going much better than poor old Kean’s fateful 19th century performance.