Albee sure Luke’s just right
THE American playwright Edward Albee used to insist on meeting actors who were being considered for major roles in his plays.
Luke Treadaway met him in London. ‘We had lunch at Wagamama in the West End,’ he told me. However, the production in question never happened.
The dramatist died last month and, sadly, was not able to give his verdict on the casting of Treadaway and Imogen Poots as Nick and Honey, the couple who visit the toxic martha and George (Imelda Staunton and conleth Hill) in Albee’s landmark play, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
‘But I feel as if I’ve been pre-approved,’ Treadaway said laughing. ‘We had a lovely lunch! We were walking along and decided to pop into Wagamama,’ he recalled, adding that Albee wasn’t fussed about going somewhere posh.
‘We both decided that’s where we’d go,’ he said.
The young actor has lucked out with his stage roles. His last appearance was four years ago, when he created the role of christopher in The curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time at the National Theatre, and in the West End, for director marianne Elliott.
Elliott, working with Tom morris, had signed Treadaway to play Albert in the original production of War Horse, also at the National.
In Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Nick and Honey are college campus neighbours of martha and George. The older couple engage in psychologically lethal party games and invite the younger couple for drinks.
But Nick and Honey aren’t as wholesome as we first believe.
I won’t give any more away, just in case you haven’t seen the play or the movie (which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton).
Treadaway told me he has always been amused by how, at the beginning of the play, Nick and Honey are the ones ‘who look as if they’re being entrapped’. The play — directed by James macdonald with Sonia Friedman producing — runs at the Harold Pinter Theatre from February 22. Before then, Treadaway will be seen on the big screen in A Street cat Named Bob, which opens here on November 4.