A new play for AM!

Royal wedding with a difference

Lead role: Anne-Marie Duff

Lead role: Anne-Marie Duff

Anne-Marie-Duff will play a queen stuck in the middle of an unrequited love  triangle.

The award-winning star will take the title role in Berenice, the story of a Palestinian queen who waits for the Roman emperor Titus to come and marry her.

‘It’s the story of this woman who has put her life on hold for this man,’ said Josie Rourke, the Donmar Warehouse’s artistic chief, who will direct the play.

Jean Racine’s five-act tragedy has been adapted by Alan Hollinghurst, who won the Man Booker prize for The Line Of Beauty, and it will run at the Donmar in the West End from September 27 through to November 24.

Titus loves Berenice passionately, but the Roman people turn against the union and he has to man up and tell her the wedding’s off. Meanwhile, Antiochus, the King of Commagene, is also in love with Berenice.

‘She is an incredibly charismatic and loyal woman,’ Ms Rourke explained, adding that politics gets in the way of love.

Before Berenice begins its run, the Donmar will stage Brian Friel’s poignant comedy Philadelphia, Here I Come.

It’s about a young man called Gar, from the fictional village of Ballybeg in County Donegal, and takes place on the night before he is due to depart for Philadelphia. Rourke calls it a play about ‘youth, hope and ambition’.

I remember a production that Dan Crawford directed at the King’s Head, with Brendan Coyle and Jonathan Arun playing the public and private sides of Gar’s character, and it struck me as a bittersweet piece about a father and son unable to communicate with each other.

Anyway, this time round, Rory Keenan will play the private Gar, and Paul Reid the public Gar. 

Lyndsey Turner will direct the  play, which will run at the Donmar from July 26 as, Ms Rourke said, a  counterpoint to the Olympics.