Elizabeth McGovern of Downton Abbey and former Spider-Man Andrew Garfield are among the stars of upcoming productions from Britain’s National Theatre.
McGovern will appear in Alexi Kaye Campbell’s play Sunset At The Villa Thalia, which opens at the London theatre in June. Garfield will take the central role of Prior Walter in a revival of Tony Kushner’s epic AIDS-crisis drama Angels in America opening in May 2017.
Other big names announced on Wednesday include Extras star Tamsin Greig, who will play a female Malvolio in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night from February 2017. The following year, Ralph Fiennes will star in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Both productions will be directed by Simon Godwin.
The company’s second season under artistic director Rufus Norris, who took over last year, will also tackle the radicalisation of young people by Muslim extremists in fact-based drama Another World: Losing Our Children to Islamic State, which opens in April.
Like other state-supported theatres, the National has faced cuts to its funding from Britain’s austerity-minded government. Upcoming work includes likely crowd-pleasers such as a new production opening in October of Amadeus starring British actor Lucian Msamati as Mozart’s rival, Salieri.
Experimental Belgian director Ivo van Hove will helm his first production for the National, an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. It opens in December.
