Susan Sarandon is to make her UK theatre debut alongsideAndrea Riseborough, when the pair portray the same woman at different ages, in Tracy Letts’ drama Mary Page Marlowe.
The play will be staged this autumn at the Old Vic in London byMatthew Warchus, in his final season as artistic director. Several actors portray the title character, which is described as a “time-jumping mosaic” spanning 70 years in the life of an accountant and mother of two in Ohio.
It marks a high-profile return to the stage for Sarandon, who made her Broadway debut in 1972 in An Evening with Richard Nixon and … by Gore Vidal before her breakout film role in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. By the time she was next on Broadway, in Exit the King in 2009, she was a household name and five-time Oscar nominee (who won for Dead Man Walking). Sarandon said: “I’m so honoured to be asked to be in a play during Matthew Warchus’s final season at the Old Vic,” adding that she was “terrified but excited”.
Riseborough, similarly better known as a film star, has not acted on stage for 15 years. Her last major London role was in Ivanov opposite Kenneth Branagh at the Donmar Warehousein 2008. She recently appeared in Warchus’s screen version ofMatilda the Musical. Riseborough said: “It’s an honour to be taking on the role of Mary – amongst others – in Tracy Letts’ poignant play, alongside the extraordinary Susan Sarandon. I’m so very grateful to be working with Matthew again and thrilled to finally work at the Old Vic, a beautiful space.”
Warchus called Letts “one of America’s greatest living writers” and said the play would be staged in-the-round – as will all the productions in his final season. Mary Page Marlowe will run from 23 September to 1 November.
Letts is best known for his Pulitzer winner August: Osage County, which was directed by Anna D Shapiro in a Chicago Steppenwolf production that playedat London’s National Theatre in 2008. Shapiro directed the premiere of Mary Page Marlowe for the Steppenwolf theatre in 2016. In his review, the New York Times critic Charles Isherwoodwrote: “Some may find the play’s form frustrating; I found it beautiful and affecting, like flipping through a friend’s photo album in no particular order, finding some faces familiar, others unexpected. And then you come upon someone entirely unknown – who obviously meant much to your friend – and you realize, with a pang of sadness, that your knowledge of even those closest to you will always be fragmentary and incomplete.”
This will be the play’s UK premiere. Letts said: “From my first experiences as a playwright here 30 years ago, to the run of August: Osage County at the National, London is an integral part of my development as an artist. I’m deeply gratified to have Mary Page Marlowe at the Old Vic, directed by Matthew, featuring these remarkable actresses. A genuine thrill.”
Warchus will step down from the Old Vic in September next year, when he will besucceeded by Rupert Goold, who in turn will be replaced in the top job at the Almeida theatreby Dominic Cooke.