Jonathan Pryce is to play the title role in Athol Fugard’s Dimetos at the Donmar Warehouse from 19 March to 9 May 2009 (press night 25 March).
South African playwright Fugard’s 1977 play is a powerful story about love, guilt and retribution which explores faith in a modern world of moral decay. Exhausted by his life in the city as a highly skilled engineer, Dimetos escapes to a remote coastal village with his niece and housekeeper in search of a simpler existence. Five years on, a stranger from the metropolis arrives to tempt him back, with devastating consequences.
Pryce was last seen on the London stage in Glengarry Glen Ross at the Apollo last year. His many stage credits include The Goat Of Who Is Sylvia? at the Almeida and Apollo, My Fair Lady at the National Theatre and Drury Lane and Oliver! at the London Palladium. Also a regular on screen, Pryce has been seen in films GI Joe, Leatherheads, The Pirates Of The Caribbean trilogy, Ronin, Evita and Tomorrow Never Dies.
Fugard’s plays include Blood Knot, The Island, Marigolds In August, Tsotsi, Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and Hello And Goodbye, which was staged at Trafalgar Studio 2 earlier this year. Also an actor and director, Fugard was last at the Donmar in 1993 directing his own work Playland.
Pryce is directed by Donmar Associate Director Douglas Hodge, whose previous directorial credits include Absurdia at the Donmar and See How They Run at the Duchess.
Dimetos adds to a Donmar season that also includes The Family Reunion, running from 20 November to 10 January as the centrepiece of a TS Eliot festival, and Andrew O’Hagan’s Be Near Me (22 January to 14 March). Full casting has now been announced for both.
Joining Samuel West and Penelope Wilton in The Family Reunion are Hattie Morahan, Anna Carteret, Una Stubbs, Gemma Jones, Paul Shelley, William Gaunt, Kevin McMonagle, Ann Marcuson and Christopher Benjamin. They are directed by Jeremy Herrin (That Face, The Vertical Hour).
Morahan, who makes her Donmar debut in this production, has recently appeared in …Some Trace Of Her at the National and The City at the Royal Court, and is known on television for the recent BBC adaptation of Sense And Sensibility. Carteret appeared this year in the National’s production of Never So Good. Stubbs’s recent London stage credits include Pygmalion at the Old Vic, La Cage Aux Folles at the Menier Chocolate Factory and Don Carlos at the Donmar. Jones has lately been on stage in On Religion at the Soho and Everything Is Illuminated at the Hampstead, and is widely recognised for her role in the Bridget Jones films.
Ian McDiarmid is joined in the National Theatre Of Scotland’s production of Be Near Me by Blythe Duff – best known for playing Jackie Reid in the long-running television series Taggart – Kath Howden, David McGranaghan, Richard Madden, Helen Mallon, Colette O’Neil and Jimmy Yuill.
The season continues after Dimetos with Gillian Anderson in A Doll’s House, which is now confirmed to play from 14 May to 18 July (press night 19 May). Anderson takes on the iconic role of Nora in this new version of Ibsen’s classic by Zinnie Harris, who has previously written for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Court and the Hampstead.
The season at the Donmar Warehouse runs concurrently with its West End season at the Wyndham’s, which kicked off this week with Ivanov. Its current production of Pam Gems’s Piaf, which ends its run at the Donmar on Saturday, will transfer to the Vaudeville in October. That will be followed at the Donmar by Creditors, which opens on 30 September.
CB