Be afraid: it’s Imelda the hellcat!
HAVING won multiple awards for her performance as Rose in the musical Gypsy, Imelda Staunton is in ‘early discussions’ about returning to the London stage in the electrifying drama Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
The celebrated actress is ‘considering’ the central role of Martha in Edward Albee’s seminal 1962 play about a marriage on life-support.
It’s one of a plethora of options from which Staunton has to choose, including films, television dramas and specials, and other theatre work.
Martha’s a hellcat of a woman, married for 20 years to George, who teaches at the college her father runs.
The pair claw at each other like wild animals — she lacerates him over his lack of success; he battles against her brutal verbal bluntness.
The New York Times gleefully reported that Albee’s dialogue is ‘dipped in acid’. I’ll say!
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were at their most scathing in Mike Nichols’s 1966 film version, for which Taylor won the Best Actress Academy Award.
The famously volatile stars were married in real life at the time.
Director James Macdonald has been assigned the duty of directing the production next year in the West End — if Ms Staunton decides to go ahead with the piece, that is.
But she is pondering other projects, too, and may not have time in her schedule for Albee.
The other roles — George, and newlyweds Nick and Honey, who become embroiled in the older couple’s cruel fun and games — will not be cast until they’ve got their Martha.
When I approached Sonia Friedman, the show’s producer, she told me: ‘We are indeed in discussion, but it is early days. Lots of moving parts need to come together before we can confirm.’
Meanwhile, plans are well advanced — but, as yet, not confirmed — for producers Michael Harrison and David Ian to take the acclaimed Chichester Festival Theatre production of Gypsy — directed by Jonathan Kent and starring Staunton — to New York in 2018.