Andrew Garfield Set for Tony Kushner’s Angels in America at U.K.'s National Theatre; Upcoming Season Announced

Spider-Man is heading to the boards! Andrew Garfield will headline Tony Kushner’s Angels in America at the U.K.’s National Theatre next year. Other big names attached to upcoming productions include Harry Potter alums Ralph Fiennes and Helen McCrory, playwright David Hare and Crucible and Bridge director Ivo van Hove.

In May 2017, Marianne Elliott will direct Kushner’s Angels in America, with Garfield returning to the National (he was last there in 2006) as Prior Walter. Millennium Approaches, the first of the two plays which comprise Kushner’s landmark work, received its British premiere at the Cottesloe in 1992 in Declan Donnellan’s original production, and was joined by Perestroika in a double-bill the following year.

Jonathan Kent’s acclaimed Chichester Festival Theatre trilogy, Young Chekhov—the playwright’s early plays Platonov, Ivanov and The Seagull, in new versions by Hare, will begin performances at the Olivier Theatre from July. Opening night is set for August 3 and actors tapped for the project include Anna Chancellor, James McArdle and Geoffrey Streatfeild.

Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus will open in the Olivier Theatre in October, with Lucian Msamati as Salieri. It is set to be followed in the venue by Sally Cookson’s Peter Pan, which is scheduled to begin performances in November. Also slated for the auditorium is Twelfth Night. Led by Tamsin Greig, the production will begin in February 2017. It is the first of two Shakespearean plays being directed by Simon Godwin, who will later helm Fiennes in Antony and Cleopatra early in 2018. Other shows that will be staged at the Olivier include Les Blancs and The Threepenny Opera (in a new translation by Simon Stephens, starring Rory Kinnear).

Returning to the Lyttelton Theatre, The Red Barn, a new play by Hare based on Georges Simenon’s novel La Main, is scheduled to open at the venue in October, helmed by Robert Icke. Broadway director of the moment van Hove will come to the National for the first time to direct Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, opening in December at the Lyttelton. Also heading for that theater's boards is McCrory, who will appear in Carrie Cracknell’s production of The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan, officially opening on June 8. Other shows set for the venue include The Plough and the Stars and The Suicide.

Additional productions to look forward to: Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer, Love, Consent, Sunset at the Villa Thalia and Mosquitoes, all at the Dorfman Theatre. Over at the Temporary Theatre there's Another World: Losing Our Children to Islamic State, The Solid Life of Sugar Water and Brainstorm.

And of note: British comedian (and national treasure) Sir Lenny Henry has been appointed to the NT Board.