Jessica Lange to Reprise Glass Menagerie Role in London
(© Joseph Marzullo/Retna)
Jessica Lange, who played Amanda Wingfield in a 2005 Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie, will return to the role in a London production of the play that will be directed by Rupert Goold and produced by Bill Kenwright. Scheduled to begin performances at the Apollo Theatre on January 31, the show will open officially on February 13 and will run through May 19. No other casting has yet been announced.
Set in St. Louis in the 1930s, The Glass Menagerie is a semi-autobiographical work. It tells the story of the Wingfields: son Tom, who feels obligated to his family yet has a strong desire to break free as his father did years earlier; his overbearing mother Amanda, a former Southern belle; and his physically and emotionally fragile sister Laura. The Broadway production of the play in which Lange starred ran for 120 performances. It was produced by Kenwright and directed by David Leveaux. The cast also included Christian Slater as Tom, Sarah Paulson as Laura, and Josh Lucas as the Gentleman Caller.
Lange played Blanche DuBois in Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway in 1992 and in London in 1996. She received a Golden Globe Award for her performance in a 1995 television film version of the play, and she also starred in a 1985 TV film of Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She received an Olivier Award nomination for her performance as Mary Tyrone in a 2000 London production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night.
A two-time Academy Award winner for her work in Tootsie and Blue Sky, Lange has starred in such other films as King Kong, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Frances, Country, Sweet Dreams, Hush, and Big Fish. She will appear as “Big” Edith Bouvier Beale opposite Drew Barrymore as Little Edie in Grey Gardens, a new film based on the lives of the women immortalized in the 1975 Maysles brothers documentary and the current Broadway musical of the same title.
For more information on the London revival of The Glass Menagerie, click here.
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