London Hit Rock 'N' Roll Extends Again; West and Fielding to Join Cast

Emma Fielding and Dominic West are set to replace Sinead Cusack and Rufus Sewell in the London production of Tom Stoppard's Rock ‘n' Roll beginning November 14. The acclaimed play also announced that it is extending its West End run another 15 weeks and will now play to February 25, 2007.

Fielding is reunited with playwright Stoppard and director Trevor Nunn; she originated the role of Thomasina in the director's original production of Stoppard's Arcadia. Other London theater credits include Playing with Fire, Look Back in Anger, Cymbeline, The School for Scandal, Measure for Measure, The School for Wives and Private Lives. Her film work includes Discovery of Heaven, Pandaemonium and Scarlet Tunic.

West recently starred in The Voysey Inheritance at the National. Other stage credits include As You Like It, Waste, The Silver Tassie and a Broadway production of Design for Living. On film he has appeared in Young Hannibal, Mona Lisa Smile, Chicago, Rock Star, Surviving Picasso and True Blue. His television credits include HBO's The Wire.

As previously reported, a six-week extension to the original engagement was announced to take the run to November 5, for which David Calder joined the cast to replace Brian Cox. Other replacement casting will be announced shortly.

Rock ‘N' Roll received its world premiere at the Royal Court before transferring to the West End's Duke of York's Theatre on July 22. The play spans the years from 1968 to 1990 from the double perspective of Prague, where a rock ‘n' roll band comes to symbolize resistance to the Communist regime, and Cambridge, where love and death are shaping the lives of three generations in the family of a Marxist philosopher. In his Theatre.com review of Rock ‘N' Roll, Matt Wolf called Stoppard's work a "long, sometimes clunky but, in the end, emotionally liberating play."