Damian Lewis on Stage: Pillars of the Community

We now have two weeks to go until Damian Lewis makes his return to the West End stage in The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? and we are continuing our countdown with Damian Lewis in Ibsen’s Pillars of the Community at the National Theatre. My story of finding out about this play is quite fun.

It all starts with a good colleague with whom I share love for theater asking me to name my favorite male and female stage performances in 2015. Easy. It’s Lesley Manville in Ibsen’s Ghosts and Damian Lewis in Mamet’s American Buffalo (with Mark Strong in Miller’s A View From the Bridge as a close second). And what is it about these performances that make me LOVE them?  Just one word: Precision.

topperfs

Then I think about the heart-breaking performance Lesley Manville gives in Ghosts which, in fact, has brought her an Olivier Award in 2014 (I saw the play much later when it visited Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2015). I know Manville mostly from her work on big screen such as Secrets and Lies (1996), Vera Drake (2004), Another Year (2010) and Mr Turner (2014) all of which were some of my favorites in the year they were released. But I really do not know about her stage work. So I google her. And this is one of the first images I hit!

source: telegraph.co.uk
source: telegraph.co.uk

Ha! Small world. Have you heard of the saying that Brits have 10 actors? I am about to believe that! 😀 And it’s time we dig into the play! Continue reading “Damian Lewis on Stage: Pillars of the Community”

Damian Lewis on Stage: Five Gold Rings or When Damian Met Helen :D

Matt Wolf, a theater critic who interviews Damian Lewis at Times Talks London in May 2014, spends quite some time talking to Damian about each and every play he has done to date at length, well, except for one: When it comes to Five Gold Rings, Wolf mentions it briefly and as more of a personal highlight than a professional one for Damian!

Matt Wolf: “One production at The Almeida called Five Gold Rings was perhaps not that successful except that it has the woman whom you ended up marrying so I would assume it was a success in that way.”

Damian laughs: “Yeah.”

source: Getty Images

Sweet! And it goes without saying that today’s walk in memory lane will be as much about Five Gold Rings as about When Damian Met Helen 😀 Continue reading “Damian Lewis on Stage: Five Gold Rings or When Damian Met Helen :D”

Damian Lewis on Stage: Into The Woods

Our “Fan Fun” Countdown to The Goat, or Who is Sylvia continues today with the only musical Damian Lewis has done to date.

Well, I told you earlier about American Buffalo programme booklet having fun questions asked by fans and answered by Damian Lewis!

americanbuffaloprogramme

Here is a fan question from that booklet! Claire Bartlett asks: “I saw you playing the Wolf in Into the Woods at the Donmar in the late 1990s. Any more musicals on the horizon?”

Oh, yeah! Way earlier than being the big, bad wolf Henry in Wolf Hall, Damian Lewis was the Wolf in Into the Woods

wolves

Damian was cast as the Wolf/Cinderella’s Prince in the 1998 London revival of Into the Woods, one of Stephen Sondheim’s greatest musicals. The revival opened at the Donmar Warehouse on 16 November 1998, and closed on 13 February 1999.

Continue reading “Damian Lewis on Stage: Into The Woods”

Damian Lewis on Stage: The Royal Shakespeare Company Years

“My heroes were all in the theatre. I wanted to be part of that great tradition that ran back to Garrick and Macready and Kean. That’s what I wished for, when I was asleep and dreaming.” – Damian Lewis in an interview with Telegraph

Damian Lewis in Hamlet (1994) at Open Air Theatre, Regents Park, London

For those of you that are not familiar with these names, and I confess I was not, Damian is talking about David Garrick, Edmund Kean and William MacReady, celebrated British Shakespearean actors of the 18th and 19th century that had substantial influence on the interpretation and understanding of Shakespeare. Continue reading “Damian Lewis on Stage: The Royal Shakespeare Company Years”

Damian Lewis on Stage: Broadway Debut in Hamlet

We continue our walk through “Damian Lewis on Stage” memory lane today with Damian’s Broadway debut in Hamlet, an experience our favorite guy calls a “growing up, coming of age experience” in his career.

source: tumblr.com
source: tumblr.com

Damian does his Broadway debut as Laertes to Ralph Fiennes’ Hamlet in 1995. The Almeida Theatre production is staged first at Hackney Empire in March 1995, and after its successful run in London, it comes to Broadway in the summer of 1995 — OMG, yes, almost twenty two years ago! Continue reading “Damian Lewis on Stage: Broadway Debut in Hamlet”