Lily models her funny bones with cast of comics in West End debut
“RAZOR-SHARP” Lily Cole is making her West End debut alongside a cast of comics in Simon Callow’s latest show.
The model, actress and entrepreneur joins Matt Berry, Charlotte Ritchie and Friday Night Dinner stars Simon Bird and Tom Rosenthal in a revival of Christopher Hampton’s The Philanthropist.
Callow, who will direct the show at Trafalgar Studios, first saw it during its original 1970 run at the Royal Court and describes it as “witty beyond belief ”.
He said: “It is about a man who cannot tell a lie so he cannot do all of the things we all do socially and all the clever pretences we make in our lives.”
Bird, 32, plays an unworldly academic, with Rosenthal, 29, as his best friend and Call The Midwife star Ritchie, 27, as his fiancee. Berry, 42, stars as an egomaniac novelist and Cole, 29, plays the seductive Araminta.
Callow, 67, said: “The tradition has been to cast it slightly older because people think young people can’t be witty but they can. And of course we are hoping to attract some of their audience, a younger audience, to the theatre. That is what we all want to do.”
Most of the cast members are better known for their film and TV work than stage roles, but Callow is not worried.
He said: “I’ve worked with comedians before and they tend to be serious people, it is a serious business comedy, you have to be very diligent to get the laughs.
“Lily is a very smart women as well as a very gorgeous one and razor sharp. Araminta is an unusual character, she stands a little aside from the others and she got that straight away.”
Cole, who has played Helen of Troy on stage at Shakespeare’s Globe, said she was struck first by the “brilliantly written” script. She said: “You
get a really strong sense of character and that really appealed to me. I’ve done a lot of comedy, mostly in film, and some of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve had have been in that genre because you are working with people who are naturally funny.”
The Philanthropist is at Trafalgar Studios from April 3 to July 22. Tickets at eveningstandardtickets.co.uk