Now here’s a project that’s dripping with class.
I caught up with Sir Nicholas Hytner just before he opened his stunning new theatre THE BRIDGE. We were taking about what kind of productions would feature there and high on his shopping list was something, anything, starring national treasure Dame Maggie Smith - perhaps best known these days for playing the formidable duchess of Grantham in TV’s DOWNTON ABBBEY.
Dame Maggie is very much a senior these days and although she’s long indicated that she’d like to return to the stage there’s been some doubt as to whether she was up to the physical demands of performing every night.
However it seems she’s as tough as the beloved, fearsome grandmother that she plays in Downton because not only has she signed up to do a theatre piece but it’s going to be a one woman show.
It’s been announced that she will “return to the stage for the first time in twelve years in A GERMAN LIFE, a new play by Christopher Hampton drawn from the life and testimony of Brunhilde Pomsel (1911-2017). Maggie Smith, alone on stage, plays Brunhilde Pomsel”
And we’re guaranteed premiere league acting. During an extraordinary life-long career the actress has won two Academy awards, five BAFTAs, four Emmys, nine Evening Standard awards and a Tony.
It sounds a fascinating story. Apparently “Brunhilde Pomsel’s life spanned the twentieth century. She struggled to make ends meet as a secretary in Berlin during the 1930s, her many employers including a Jewish insurance broker, the German Broadcasting Corporation and, eventually, Joseph Goebbels”.
And we know it’ll be historically accurate because “Christopher Hampton’s play is drawn from the testimony Pomsel gave when she finally broke her silence shortly before she died”.
Hampton is one of our most revered playwrights and screenwriters and both he and director Jonathan Kent, have many decades of hits behind them. The top class team is completed with design by Anna Fleischle, lighting by Jon Clark and sound design by Paul Groothuis.
Previews begin on 6 April 2019 with the opening night on Friday 12 April for a five-week run until 11 May.
The little Jermyn Street Theatre, around the corner from PHANTOM OF THE OPERA often has some very classy productions indeed, performed in their very intimate space.