Archive for the 'Theater' Category

I’ve added some wonderful photos of Keira on stage for her role as Karen Wright in The Children’s Hour. I would really love to have the chance to see this but if any of you are lucky enough to get that chance, be sure to let us know what your thoughts on the production and Keira’s performance. Enjoy the photos!

When the film star made her West End stage debut in an updated version of Molière’s The Misanthrope in 2009, she got through it with her dignity intact, but often seemed strained and nervous, as well as alarmingly thin.

She certainly didn’t strike me as a natural stage actress, and I assumed she would stick to the movies where she has enjoyed such conspicuous success.

But here she is, back again at the Comedy Theatre, and giving a performance in Lillian Hellman’s sometime creaky old melodrama, The Children’s Hour, which displays confidence throughout before rising in the final act to dramatic heights that are shattering in their intensity and deeply affecting.

But the whole of Ian Rickson’s atmospheric, slow-burning and ultimately enthralling production proves far more compelling that I expected.

Though no masterpiece, The Children’s Hour has sturdy dramatic strengths, and one suspects that Arthur Miller must have learnt from it when writing The Crucible.

Like that play, it concerns hysteria among teenage girls, and a malign leader among them who brings catastrophe down on the heads of adults. But witchcraft isn’t the charge brought against innocent characters here, but lesbianism, making the play exceptionally daring for the 1930s. Indeed, although The Children’s Hour enjoyed big success in New York, it was banned from the British stage until as late as 1960.

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I’ve added some beautiful new photos from ‘The Children’s Hour’ press night which took place last night in London. Keira looks absolutely gorgeous and has been receiving some great reviews for her performance. Enjoy the new photos!

Actress Keira Knightley is set to return to the West End in a production of The Children’s Hour, which is scheduled to open early next year.

The star will be joined by Elisabeth Moss, best known as Peggy Olson in the award-winning series Mad Men.

Knightley, last seen on stage in The Misanthrope at the Comedy Theatre, will play a teacher at a girls’ boarding school in the new production.

Her new film – Never Let Me Go - opened this year’s London Film Festival.

Moss, who is set to make her West End debut, has also appeared in the movies Get Him to the Greek, Did you Hear About the Morgans? and Girl, Interrupted.

In the play, teachers – played by Knightley and Moss – are accused by a disgruntled student of having a lesbian relationship.

The Children’s Hour was last produced in London by the National Theatre in 1994 and was written by Lillian Hellman in 1934.

Source

The official website for The Misanthrope has been updated with a few more stills of Keira performing on stage, they have been added to the gallery!