The Stage

Mendes and Spacey reunite to stage transatlantic classics

Published Tuesday 3 April 2007 at 14:00 by Alistair Smith

Sam Mendes is to return to the London stage next year, teaming up with Kevin Spacey in a three-way partnership with the Old Vic and New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The three-season transatlantic venture will see the former Donmar Warehouse artistic director leading a company of British and American actors, who will perform an annual double-bill of classic works at BAM, the Old Vic and at least one other international venue.

In the first year of The Bridge Project, Mendes will direct Stephen Dillane in the title role of Hamlet and as Prospero in The Tempest, while in 2009 Simon Russell Beale will play Leontes in The Winter’s Tale and Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard. The cast and productions for 2010 have not been confirmed.

Mendes commented: “Since our collaboration on The Real Thing at the Donmar in 1999, I’ve been looking forward to working with the extraordinary Stephen Dillane again and I’m thrilled that he’ll be leading a transatlantic company of exceptional talent. And, of course, I’m looking forward to reuniting with my friend and collaborator, Simon Russell Beale, in 2009, for what will be our seventh Shakespeare production together.”

The scheme will also mark a reunion for Mendes and Spacey, who worked together on the Oscar-winning film American Beauty. Spacey said he “couldn’t be more excited” about the partnership. He added: “It has been my hope since I became artistic director of the Old Vic that the work we do in London should have an international life, and particularly, a presence in New York.

“This new venture takes the desire for the Old Vic to be in conversation with the New York theatre community to a new level, by placing the collaboration between us and BAM at the centre of the creative process.”

Hamlet and The Tempest will run at BAM from January to March, 2008, at the Old Vic from May to June, and then will transfer to the Piccolo Theatre in Milan. Dates and European venues for the shows in 2009 and 2010 are yet to be announced.

Stage critic Mark Shenton said that the project marked a step forward in Spacey’s ambition to put the Old Vic “back on the classical map”. He added: “He has partly realised it in his own appearances there in Richard II and A Moon for the Misbegotten, as well as in giving a London home to Edward Hall’s recent Shakespeare double bill.

“But, unlike those ad hoc arrangements, this new initiative marks a plan to develop an artistic structure and identity for the work to be created within. It’s wonderfully resourceful that the productions will be created with two permanent destinations in mind and it will be a pleasure to welcome Sam Mendes back to the London stage from which he has absented himself for far too long.”