Fatal Attraction!
Part of the fascination will be just how differently we will view Fatal Attraction more than 30 years after the film originally came out.
The 1987 movie, which so famously starred Michael Douglas and Glenn Close, has now been adapted for the stage, coming to Theatre Royal Brighton from Friday, January 14-Saturday, January 22.
It will star singer and TV actor Kym Marsh (Hear’Say, Coronation Street, Morning Live) as the iconic Alex Forrest and soap star Oliver Farnworth (Coronation Street) as Dan Gallagher. When happily married
New York attorney Dan Gallagher meets charming editor Alex (Kym Marsh) on a night out in the city, they both commit to a night of passion they can’t take back. Dan returns home to his family and tries to forget the mistake he has made, but Alex has different ideas. Dan’s about to discover that love is a dangerous game, and Alex has only one rule: you play fair with her, and she’ll play fair with you. “Theatre is something that I’ve not done as much of as I would like”, says Kym. “When I made the transition from music to acting it was on the back of six months in the West End with Saturday Night Fever and I absolutely loved it. I had the best time and I got a lot of discipline from that, but in terms of plays I have not done an awful lot.
“This was something that I was really missing from my CV and actually this feels almost like my debut when it comes to doing a play.
“And this is a wonderful play, and it is a wonderful opportunity certainly as far as my character is concerned.
“You can’t live up to Glenn Close certainly.
“They are big shoes to fill and I’m not going to try to. If you went into it and started to try to copy, I think that would be an issue.
“Besides you want to try to bring something new – especially when someone else has played it before and played it so unbelievably well.
“You want to do it rather differently, but also the stage version is not exactly the same.
“There are little differences, but really I think it’s just really important to tell the story.”
And it will have different resonances now.
“A lot of people are talking a lot more about mental health these days and I think that’s important to raise.
“The 1980s were a long time ago and things were different then.
“Obviously no one should go around boiling someone’s pets! There are extremes! “But I think now we would try to understand why she is like that. And you get that in this.
“You do get a sense that something has happened in her life. She has not had an easy time, and certainly in the stage adaptation it all digs a little bit deeper into Alex. She is someone who needs help. She really does.”