Oscar-winning actresses Cate Blanchett and Juliette Binoche will appear at the Barbican theatre next year as the venue celebrates its 30th anniversary with an eclectic programme of work.
Staged as part of the London 2012 Festival, which takes place next summer to celebrate the arrival of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in the city, Blanchett will star in German playwright Botho Strauss’s Gross Und Klein in April before Binoche takes to the stage in August Strindberg’s Mademoiselle Julie in September.
Gross Und Klein is presented by the Sydney Theatre Company in a new version by Martin Crimp (The City) and will be directed by Luc Bondy who returns to the UK after directing Sweet Nothings at the Young Vic last year. Blanchett, who is well known for her numerous starring roles in films including Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Notes On A Scandal and Babel, will make her London stage debut in the drama as the perpetually disappointed Lotte. Rejected by her husband and unrecognised by her old friends, Lotte searches for human connections in a surreal Wonderland-like world.
Binoche will act in her native French tongue for Frédéric Fisbach’s contemporary and striking re-imagining of Mademoiselle Julie. Strindberg’s intimate drama about a woman longing to escape the ties imposed by her position as the daughter of a Count sees the tragedy of the three main protagonists unfold under the watch of a chorus of local community actors.
Bincohe returns to the London stage for the first time since 2008, when she appeared opposite dancer Akram Khan in In-I at the National Theatre. Internationally renowned for her screen career, the actress has extensive starring credits in films including The English Patient, Chocolat, Breaking And Entering and Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours trilogy.
Also presented as part of the 2012 season will be the first ever UK performances of Robert Wilson and Philip Glass’s opera Einstein On The Beach and an as yet unannounced new work by groundbreaking theatre company Complicite in May, a programme of 10 works by Pina Bausch performed by Tanztheater Wuppertal in June and July, and the return of the Olivier Award-nominated interactive theatrical experience You Me Bum Bum Train in July.
CM