The Amazing Spider-Man star Andrew Garfield will return to the National Theatre stage in 2017, leading the cast of a revival of seminal drama Angels In America.
Garfield’s NT comeback, following his 2006 outing in Burn / Chatroom / Citizenship, was one of a number of high profile casting stories announced at the South Bank institution today.
Olivier Award winner Tamsin Greig will take on the gender-swapped role of Malvolia in Twelfth Night, also in 2017, directed by Simon Godwin, who will also direct Ralph Fiennes in Antony And Cleopatra in 2018. Both shows will be staged in the Olivier Theatre.
Among other big name castings for the NT, Downton Abbey’s Elizabeth McGovern will star alongside Ben Miles in Alexi Kaye Campbell’s Sunset At The Villa Thalia from June and Lucian Msamati will play Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s classic Amadeus, which runs in the Olivier from October.
The new season also marks the directorial debut of Ivo van Hove at the NT. Last year’s Olivier Award winner, for A View From The Bridge, will bring a remade version of his Hedda Gabler, previously seen in New York and Amsterdam, to London in December.
While Hedda Gabler runs in the Lyttelton, Sally Cookson’s adaptation of Peter Pan will run in the Olivier. The co-production with Bristol Old Vic will feature the same – as yet unannounced – actress playing Mrs Darling and Captain Hook.
New writing is also central to the National Theatre’s new season. David Hare’s latest play The Red Barn, will be directed by Critics’ Circle Award winner Robert Icke in the Lyttelton, while Lee Hall’s Our Ladies Of Perpetual Succour, a production by the National Theatre of Scotland and Live Theatre, directed by Vicky Featherstone, will play in the Dorfman.
The Dorfman will also house a new musical, A Pacifist’s Guide To The War On Cancer, co-written by Bryony Kimmings, and new plays by Alexander Zeldin, Lucy Kirkwood and Nina Raine.
Among the revivals playing at the NT will be Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea, starring Helen McCrory, O’Casey’s The Plough And The Stars, and the transfer of Chichester Festival Theatre’s Young Chekhov trilogy – Platonov, Ivanov and The Seagull – which runs in the Olivier Theatre from 3 August.
Today’s announcement only unveiled one production for the Temporary Theatre, Another World: Losing Our Children To Islamic State. The verbatim show, written by Gillian Slovo and developed with former Tricycle Theatre Artistic Director Nicolas Kent, is to be the final fully staged production in the National’s now iconic bright red space.
Another ending coming at the National will be that of Sunday performances, which are to be phased out.