Actors Jeremy Irons and Siobhan Redmond will both return to the Royal Shakespeare Company this spring to lead the cast of new plays The Gods Weep and Dunsinane.
The world premieres, by Dennis Kelly and David Greig, play at the Hampstead theatre between February and April.
Oscar-winning actor Irons rejoins the RSC after 23 years away to star in Kelly’s The Gods Weep, a play about a corporate giant who decides to split his power among his subordinates, unleashing a bloody struggle.
The multi award-winning star of stage and screen, whose film credits include Reversal Of Fortune – for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role – Dead Ringers, The Lion King and Die Hard With A Vengeance, last worked with the company in the 1986/7 season when he appeared in The Winter’s Tale and Richard II. His most recent London stage appearances came in 2006’s Embers and 2008’s Never So Good.
Irons is joined in the cast of The Gods Weep by Nikki Amuka-Bird, Karen Archer, Neal Barry, Babou Ceesay, Sam Hazeldine, Joanna Horton, Stephen Noonan, Luke Norris, Sally Orrock, Helen Schlesinger, Laurence Spellman, John Stahl and Matthew Wilson.
Redmond, who last appeared with the RSC in its 2007 production of Twelfth Night alongside American actor John Lithgow, leads the cast of Greig’s Dunsinane, a drama following one man’s attempt to restore peace to a country ravaged by war following the death of Macbeth.
The cast of Dunsinane also includes Jacob Anderson, Brian Ferguson, Lisa Hogg, Joshua Jenkins, Alex Mann, Tony McGeever, Mairi Morrison, Jonny Phillips, Daniel Rose, Ewan Stewart, Sam Swann and an ensemble from local youth theatres who will play soldiers.
Redmond’s previous RSC credits include The Comedy Of Errors, The Spanish Tragedy and Much Ado About Nothing. On television she has been seen in The Smoking Room, Between The Lines and opposite Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson in cult comedy The High Life.
The RSC premieres open a Hampstead theatre spring season which also includes Sebastian Barry’s new play about Hans Christian Andersen’s visit to Charles Dickens’s home, Andersen’s English, and Jonathan Harvey’s new play Canary.
MA