It might be a tiny theatre, but London's Donmar Warehouse has shown its pulling power once again by announcing a new season that includes British actors who have made big names for themselves in the US.
The Wire's Dominic West, The Mummy's Rachel Weisz and Spider-Man baddie Alfred Molina will all appear in plays at the 250-seat Covent Garden theatre during the next year.
All three actors have made their names on film and TV, and the Donmar's artistic director, Michael Grandage, said they all had impressive stage reputations. "We offer actors the opportunity to do relatively short runs, which is one of the attractions of coming here."
Weisz, before she went off to kill mummies in Hollywood and win an Oscar for The Constant Gardener, was given a most promising newcomer award for her role in the Donmar's Design for Living. She will appear as the fading Southern belle Blanche DuBois in a new version of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, opening in July.
West is now best known for his portrayal of the smart and likeable Baltimore cop Jimmy McNulty in The Wire. It will be his Donmar debut, but he has an impressive theatre CV, including The Voysey Inheritance at the National, Rock'n'Roll in the West End and The Seagull at the Old Vic.
He will appear as Segismundo in Life is a Dream, the best-known work by the Spanish golden age playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca. The epic play sees Segismundo banished to a secret, mythical world cut off from the sun in order to protect his country from prophesied horrors. The new version has been adapted by the playwright Helen Edmundson and opens in October.
Further ahead will be Molina's appearance in a new play about the artist Mark Rothko. Molina got himself noticed as Joe Orton's lover and murderer Kenneth Halliwell in the film Prick Up Your Ears before basing himself in the US, where he acts on stage and in films including Spider-Man 2, Frida and The Da Vinci Code.
Grandage will direct Molina in Red, by the American playwright and movie screenplay writer John Logan, whose credits include The Aviator, Gladiator and The Last Samurai. The two-handed play centres on Rothko as he takes on "his greatest challenge" – the Seagram murals – watched by his young studio assistant, played by the up-and-coming British actor Eddie Redmayne.
Grandage said the season highlighted the Donmar's "renewed commitment to American drama" and the choices were all about giving audiences a varied repertoire of work.
It has been another good year for the Donmar and its tentacles continue to spread from its small base. Jude Law is soon to appear as Hamlet in the final play of its residency in the West End, at the Wyndhams, and after that the play will spend a week at Kronborg Castle in Denmark – Shakespeare's Elsinore. Its much-praised version of Schiller's Mary Stuart is about to open on Broadway, joining Frost/Nixon. Donmar musicals will also travel: Parade will open in Los Angeles, while Piaf will travel to Buenos Aires.
