Ralph Fiennes to Take on David Hare's Solo Play About Battling COVID-19

London's Bridge Theatre aims to reopen this September and October, using 250 socially distanced seats out of its 900 available ones. Ralph Fiennes will make his debut at the venue performing David Hare’s monologue Beat the Devil, a new play written as a response to the playwright's experience with contracting coronavirus. Nicholas Hytner will direct the show, in which Hare recalls the delirium of his illness as well as the mix of fear, dreams, honest medicine and dishonest politics that go hand in hand with the COVID-19 crisis. Performances begin on August 29.

Hare, who won a 1990 Olivier Award for Racing Demon, contracted the virus around the same time the United Kingdom introduced lockdown measures. Fiennes, who is set to star as Agatha Trunchbull in the forthcoming Matilda movie, is a two-time Oscar nominee for Schindler's List and The English Patient. He won a Tony Award for his turn in the 1995 revival of Hamlet and received an additional nomination for Faith Healer.

In addition to Beat the Devil, the Bridge Theatre's reopening offerings will include a stage version of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads monologues, which were broadcasted on BBC One in June. Imelda Staunton, Kristin Scott Thomas, Rochenda Sandall, Maxine Peake, Lucian Msamati, Lesley Manville, Tamsin Greig and Monica Dolan will perform.

Running alongside those performances will be three other monologue shows, including Inua Ellams' An Evening with an Immigrant, Yolanda Mercy's Quarter Life Crisis and Zodwa Nyoni's Nine Lives.

The full schedule for these productions can be found here.