When Tom Stoppard backed out of adapting his 1998 Oscar-winning movie Shakespeare in Love for the London stage, producer Sonia Friedman adapted in her own way, hiring playwright Lee Hall to carry on.
The play wouldn't have Stoppard, and whether audiences would accept anyone besides Gwyneth Paltrow playing Viola was anyone's guess. But it's all in a day's work for Friedman. Commercial theatre, she told Playbill recently, is "full of surprises, and every day is a challenge."
The world premiere of Shakespeare in Love opens today at the West End's Noël Coward Theatre, produced by Sonia Friedman Productions and Disney Theatricals. Tomorrow's reviews will help determine whether it lasts until tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow (one of the many Shakespearean phrases borrowed to humorous effect in the script).
Opening a show on the West End without a tryout run elsewhere is a big risk. But it might not be too wise to bet against Sonia Friedman. Her productions in London won 14 Olivier Awards this year alone. And she has been a producer of six shows that have won Tony Awards as the Broadway season's best, including The Book of Mormon. (Upcoming on Broadway: Jez Butterworth's The River starring Hugh Jackman.)
Shakespeare in Love -- the play as well as the movie -- depicts a fictional story of a love affair between William Shakespeare, who is in the process of writing Romeo and Juliet, and a young aspiring actress named Viola de Lesseps. The film won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress (Paltrow), and Best Supporting Actress (Judi Dench). Joseph Fiennes played Shakespeare, and the stellar cast also featured Ben Affleck, Geoffrey Rush, Rupert Everett and Imelda Staunton.
The play features Tom Bateman (The Duchess of Malfi at the Old Vic) as Will Shakespeare and Lucy Briggs-Owen (A Midsummer Night's Dream at the RSC, Noises Off on the West End) as Viola De Lesseps. David Oakes (Much Ado About Nothing at the RSC, The 24 Hour Plays at the Old Vic, TV's "Ripper Street") plays friend and rival playwright Christopher Marlowe in a role expanded from the movie version. The company of 28 actors and musicians is one of the biggest ever on the West End.
There's a dog, too.
Declan Donnellan directs. Donnellan is co-founder of Cheek by Jowl, which specializes in, among other things, re-imagining Shakespeare's texts.
"The most extraordinary thing about working in commercial theatre," Sonia Friedman told Playbill recently, "is that no one will ever really understand why something works or why it doesn't. That's why it's the most exciting place to be."
