Vintage Pryce is right for a perfect Storm
HOT French playwright Florian Zeller has lured Eileen Atkins and Jonathan Pryce back on the stage.
The theatrical giants will star in Zeller’s new piece, The Height Of The Storm, which has been adapted — as were all Zeller’s hits, including the acclaimed The Father — by Christopher Hampton.
Pryce said he thinks ‘really hard’ before doing a play, saying that ‘stage has to be something you can create and recreate eight times a week for two months’.
He read The Height Of The Storm twice. ‘The second time I cried. It’s a very moving, passionate, poetic piece, which is what attracted me to it,’ said Pryce, who will play Andre, a novelist who has been married to Madeleine, Atkins’s role, for 50 years.
Director Jonathan Kent also cried when he saw the play in Paris, as did Hampton.
So, why does it have this effect on the tear ducts? ‘It’s about grief, loss but above all it’s a celebration of love,’ said Kent.
But, he added, the play is also ‘a forum for two of our greatest actors. Eileen’s a phenomenon,’ he continued. ‘She’s of a certain age [she’s 83], but she’s ageless.’
They will begin performances at Wyndham’s on October 2 following the theatre’s twomonth period of refurbishment.
Before it begins its run in the West End, the play’s producers, Simon Friend, Mark Goucher and Howard Panter, have booked it on a short tour playing at Richmond Theatre from September 1, followed by Cambridge Arts Theatre and Theatre Royal Bath.
Pryce said he’d been involved with projects that Ms Atkins had worked on, but usually she’d completed her part by the time he got there. He recalled filming the BBC series Cranford, where Atkins had finished her scenes. ‘We had a cardboard cut-out of her because the rest of the cast missed her so much,’ he said.
Now he’ll be working with her in the flesh. ‘She’s up there as one of the best,’ he said.
Years ago Pryce thought 60 would be the best age to retire because he didn’t want to become one of those older actors who are patronised by the young.
‘Fortunately, I’m managing to stave that off,’ said the 70-yearold. ‘I couldn’t imagine what I’d do if I’d stopped ten years ago.’