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Keira Knightley has cancelled her close-ups in front of movie cameras for a while so she can make her stage debut in the West End in December.
Last night, the Oscar-nominated actress was said to be ‘terrified but excited’ about appearing in a modern-day version of Moliere’s 17th century masterpiece The Misanthrope, in which she will play a flirtatious Hollywood film star, joining an ensemble cast led by Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actor Damian Lewis, who plays the title role.
Tara Fitzgerald and Dominic Rowan will also star. Rehearsals start the middle of next month, with preview performances at the Comedy Theatre from December 7 and an official opening night on December 17.
Debuting in December: Keira Knightley hits the West End stage for the first time in The Misanthrope
However, Keira’s preparations have already begun. She has been working with a voice coach and having singing lessons to help with voice projection.
The actress is a child of the theatre and, in a sense, has been preparing for this her whole life. ‘It’s in my blood,’ she told me once, reminding me that the first time we met it was backstage when she was a baby.
She was, indeed, ‘born in a trunk’, and would often accompany her parents - mother Sharman Macdonald is a playwright and father Will Knightley an actor (he’s currently about the only actor in Calendar Girls to keep his clothes on) – on theatre tours.
As Damian, her future leading man, noted: ‘She’s been surrounded by theatre all her life. ‘She also knows of the importance of being part of a company of actors.
‘It’s not the bloody Keira Knightley show,’ she joked to one friend. That point was underscored by director Thea Sharrock who, interestingly, directed Daniel Radcliffe in his revealing stage debut in Equus.
‘Keira’s right – it’s not the Keira Knightley show. She’s the leading lady because she has the biggest female role, but she’s not the lead part. This is Damian’s show.
It’s not the Keira show!’, says the actress, who has a small role
‘I signed up to work with Damian Lewis because it’s brilliant to get him back on stage. And along the way we happened to get Keira Knightley, which is fantastic and I’m very excited but, you know, it’s in that order.’
However, both Damian and Sharrock were clearly thrilled to be working with Keira because, however small her name is on the marquee, her star power will bring in punters.
When Sharrock met Keira, the director said she knew the actress was ready for the theatre.
‘It’s not a whim on her part,’ she told me. ‘She’s absolutely ready to come into this vulnerable position – and I’m interested in working with her, to push her in a way that I don’t think she has been pushed before because although she has worked with amazing directors, film doesn’t work like that.’
Sharrock pointed to Radcliffe’s growth as an actor after runs in Equus in London and New York, and how that richness is starting to show in his screen work.
The actors will work from a version of The Misanthrope shaped by Martin Crimp 15 years ago and first performed at the Young Vic with Ken Stott. Damian explained that it’s an entirely updated version of the play, originally written in 1666, where Moliere was venting his anger at the ‘insincerity and vacuousness and shallowness of society around him’. ‘
These are people who live to be seen at the latest play, to be wearing the latest fashion, to be generally complimenting and flattering anyone they see in order to further their way up the greasy social pole,’ he said.
Crimp has taken Moliere’s characters and turned them into a playwright (Damian’s character, Alceste), a critic, an agent, a journalist and others on the social whirl, plus an actress, known as Celimene in Moliere’s original but now called Jennifer (the role Keira will play).
‘Jennifer’s a young American starlet and everyone within the play is going: “Why on earth are you in love with her? She’s sh**ging everything that moves. ..”‘ Damian explained.
The actor observed that there has always been a need for ‘what’s current, what’s fashionable’. ‘It was true in 1666. It was true when Martin Crimp’s version was written 15 years ago and it’s true now,’ said Damian, who was speaking from the set of the movie Your Highness, which is shooting in Belfast.
Crimp is working with Sharrock on bringing his 1994 version bang up to date. Keira’s character, Jennifer, is a piece of work; a type I meet time and time again. But very different from Keira herself who, away from the limelight, is not a party girl at all and who, away from the red carpet, couldn’t give a fig about fashion.
‘She’s as normal as they come,’ Sharrock agreed. However, I’m fascinated by the fact that this is the second role Keira has taken that essays aspects of movie stardom.
In London Boulevard, a film she shot for director William Monahan opposite Colin Farrell, she plays a reclusive screen star, besieged by paparazzi, who gets involved with an ex-con. And now she opts to play a spoilt American starlet in The Misanthrope.
‘I love the fact that she’s attracted to the role and that she gets the humour of it. She gets that she’s a massive star about to play a massive star, and that’s ironic, that’s hilarious and she’s big enough to rise above that,’ Sharrock told me.
Keira and her partner Rupert Friend can rehearse at home together. As has been mentioned here before, Mr Friend makes his own stage debut in The Little Dog Laughed, which is opening at the Garrick in January.
Along with London Boulevard, Keira has two other movies due out next year. They are Never Let Me Go, based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, and an American picture she shot in New York called Last Night.
She has also been in talks about starring in a new film version of the musical My Fair Lady, which Danny Boyle had hoped to direct, but he has withdrawn from the project. It won’t shoot now until 2011.
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