Sigourney Weaver Sets West End Debut As Prospero In Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’
EXCLUSIVE: Sigourney Weaver will make her West End stage debut as storm-creating sorcerer Prospero in The Tempest and Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell will play sparring lovers Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing when director Jamie Lloyd returns Shakespeare early this winter to the historic Theatre Royal Drury Lane, a landmark venue in Covent Garden owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Weaver, star of Ridley Scott’s Alien movies and James Cameron’s Avatar epics, last starred in one of Will’s plays when she played Portia in a 1986 off-Broadway revival of The Merchant of Venice.
As a sophomore at Stanford in 1979, she played Goneril in a traveling production of King Lear.
The star once revealed that she pretended “I was doing Henry V the entire time” she was playing Ripley in Alien. “I thought, ‘Well, as a woman, I’ll never be cast as Henry V, so this is my Henry V,” Weaver told New York magazine in a 2012 interview.
“Sigourney knows her Shakespeare, she knows theater, and I could not be more excited that she has agreed to play this role,“ Lloyd told Deadline.
He also said that he’s “thrilled” that “my dear friends Tom and Hayley” are headlining the romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing in his Jamie Lloyd Company Drury Lane Shakespeare season.
The first preview of The Tempest is December 7, and it runs through February 1.
The first Much Ado About Nothing preview is on February 10, and that runs until April 5.
Built in 1763, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane became a popular venue for performances of Shakespeare. David Garrick and the ancient thespian greats played the Bard’s work there.
Lloyd Webber and his LW Theatre company spent an estimated $77M on a superbly realized restoration of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, and he’d noted several times that he wanted Shakespeare back at The Lane, as it’s affectionately known, because he fondly remembers at age 9 being taken to see Gielgud in The Tempest “and it clearly made an impression on him,” said Lloyd.
The two men formed a close bond when they worked together on the now-Broadway-bound Olivier Award-winning Sunset Boulevard starring an incandescent Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond.
“Andrew told me the story about Gielgud snapping Prospero’s staff on the last night and announcing that The Lane would be lost to musicals forever,” the director said.
Oklahoma! and other shows had preceded The Tempest, and it was to be immediately followed by My Fair Lady and many other musicals since.
One day, unexpectedly, the composer and impresario told Lloyd ,”Look, I’ve always wanted Shakespeare back at Drury Lane.”
Lloyd was shown around the theatre, was open to exploring “all the possibilities” and felt excited to be the first company to bring Shakespeare back to The Lane.
Jamie Lloyd in London (Baz Bamigboye/Deadline)
It made sense that The Tempest needed to be the one that marked the return.
Lloyd told us that he had an epiphany one night that Sigourney Weaver playing Prospero would “create theatrical electricity.”
He fired off an email Weaver’s agent, who responded that it was unlikely that she’d want to engage because Weaver hadn’t performed Shakespeare in public for over 30 years, and the last time she was on a stage was when she did Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike in NYC in 2012.
The very next morning, Lloyd continued, ”There was an email in my inbox with the subject, “Hello from Sigourney.” And she wrote me this amazing email — really passionate, excited email. We got on Zoom straight away, and we had an amazing, inspiring conversation. She’s such a lovely, witty person. So insightful. She’d read the play, especially from a perspective of a woman playing Prospero. And that really excited her and it made sense and illuminated the play in new ways. And so she’s coming to make her West End debut at Drury Lane playing Prospero in The Tempest.”
He added that he kept coming back to Weaver’s performances “in all those iconic movies — Ghostbusters, Gorillas in the Mist, Working Girl, all of them.”
Lloyd went a little bit fanboy and told her that he’d seen “Alien more times than any other movie. And I just thought, ‘How amazing would it be to work with someone that you’ve admired since you were a kid?’ Oh, wow. And to bring her to London. And again, it just feels like such an event.”
The director believes that Weaver’s “commanding presence, huge charisma and that amazing power” is perfect to play Prospero. And that she can “clearly get into the complexity of the role” of this person “with delusions of vengeance, this kind of ruthless revenge against the people that have sent her away, to learning about forgiveness and love and compassion. There’s a real journey in that, isn’t there? And there’s a real internal struggle. And we talked about how a shipwreck can become a new kind of hope. Can’t there? I mean, really, that’s my sort of key thinking about the entire season, is that I just want this to be a really joyful season. And both of the plays are about the hope of the future and not dwelling on the past, maybe,“ he said.
Lloyd added that he felt “honored” that Weaver even responded to his email because he thought “it bode so well in terms of just a direct email straight away; it’s very personal. As we know, sometimes people kind of do things through their teams and managers. But actually, she knows what theater is, and she knows it’s about relationships.”
Sigourney Weaver
Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images
Lloyd’s well aware of that too.
He goes way back with Hiddleston, even further with Atwell.
Back in early 2019, Lloyd directed a hauntingly sublime version of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal with Hiddleston, Zawe Ashton and Charlie Cox at the Harold Pinter Theatre. It quickly transferred to the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre for a limited run, where it was nominated for four Tony Awards.
Tom Hiddleston and Zawe Ashton (Baz Bamigboye/Deadline)
Lloyd has remained close to his cast ever since.
Similarly with Atwell, who he directed in Alexi Kaye Campbell’s 2011 play The Faith Machine at London’s Royal Court Theatre. They reunited two years later in a revival of Kaye’s The Pride, in which Atwell excelled, at the Trafalgar Studios. The drama was an early example of Lloyd’s then-nascent Jamie Lloyd Company, which at the time was in partnership with ATG Entertainment.
He added that it’s “very meaningful” in terms of the season for him to be working with “those two old collaborators, they’re Jamie Lloyd Company alumni. And I think they’re both two of the finest of our generation, aren’t they? And they know each other well. So there’s an instant chemistry between the two of them, and I can’t wait to see what they come up with for Benedick and Beatrice.”
Hayley Atwell (Faye Thomas)
Lloyd’s enjoyed watching Hiddleston and Atwell on screens both big and small. He mentioned Hiddleston’s performance in The Night Manager — he’s in the midst of shooting its sequel — and the actor’s adventures playing Loki in the various levels of the Marvel Universe. “And he still comes home to the theatre whenever he can,” Lloyd marveled.
Atwell soared in the Marvel Universe as well, plus she has been starring with Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One and its follow-up Mission: Impossible 8. She was remarkable in a a revival of Rosmersholm, directed by Ian Rickson at the Duke of York’s in 2019, the year before she played Isabel for director Josie Rourke in Measure for Measure at the Donmar Warehouse.
“So she’s the real deal,” Lloyd declared. “Both are, and they’re also both very witty people. … They’ve got this great intelligence, this great wit,” Lloyd observed, perfect qualities for Much Ado About Nothing, which he called “a joyful play.”
Although he complained that he has seen it played a touch too “broad.”
He said that it doesn’t need to be played at a “slapstick pace” to be fun. “The language in its own right is funny. I think they’ll be amazing sparring partners but also hint at that kind of tenderness under the surface.”
Both productions of The Tempest and Much Ado About Nothing will be stripped back, and he will ponder with frequent collaborator Soutra Gilmour on how the shows will look and feel.
There’s a shipwreck in The Tempest, but Lloyd won’t reveal whether he’s tempted or not to place one on the Drury Lane’s boards.
However, unlike his Sunset Boulevard and Romeo and Juliet productions, he won’t be using video as part of the performance for the Drury Lane shows.
“They’ll be stripped down, but no video. I’m saving all the video energy for Sunset Boulevard on Broadway,” he explained.
The two Shakespeares will run between Disney’s Frozen, which closes September 8, and musical Hercules, which begins performances in summer 2025.
“That’s why the Shakespeare season is a strictly limited total of 16 weeks,” said Lloyd. He added that there have been no discussions about the plays being captured by the National Theatre’s NT Live cameras, nor has there been talk of transferring to Broadway.
“I always just make something for the theatre in which it’s meant to be performed, and then we see the after that,” Lloyd said during a conversation at the Jamie Lloyd Company offices located in a wing of Somerset House on the Strand, literally a stone’s throw from the Drury Lane.
We first touched base about the possibility of Shakespeare at Drury Lane late last year and have kept talking, on and off, since.
All kinds of names were bandied about by a few in the know. “Tom Hanks,” someone gleefully told me. Wrong Tom, old boy.
“Margot Robbie,” another boasted.
“It’s so funny. I’ve heard these names, “ said Lloyd, “but no, not true. I mean, I would love to work with Margot Robbie on a play. I think she’s remarkable, isn’t she? And she came to see A Doll’s House that we did with Jessica Chastain. And that would be a dream come true to work with her.”
However, he revealed that he had spoken to Robbie “a couple of times” but “not” about Shakespeare.
“I think, as I say, one day, she’d like to explore the idea of doing a play, but let’s see what happens,” he cautioned.
Lloyd soon heads back to New York to begin rehearsals for Sunset Boulevard.
He and Weaver plan to meet up while he’s there to discuss her Prospero. He noted that the name won’t switch gender to Prospera as happened with Julie Taymor’s 2010 film of The Tempest, where the revengeful noble magician was played by Helen Mirren.
“It will remain Prospero,” Lloyd insisted.
Rehearsals for The Tempest will begin in London on October 28, “literally a week after we open Sunset on Broadway,” Lloyd said.
His Jamie Lloyd Company will produce the season alone without the participation of ATG Entertainment.
The 16-week Shakespeare season will feature 25,000 tickets for £25 [US$32] and they’ll be “ring-fenced exclusively” for under-30s, key workers and those receiving government benefits. He said that he’s “well aware” that in the past wealthier folk who can afford to pay steeper prices have taken unfair advantage and gobbled up specially priced cheaper seats.
“These are good seats too,” he beamed. But they will introduce new methods to ensure the cheap seats go to the “right people.”
Theatre Royal Drury Lane (Baz Bamigboye/Deadline)
Working on The Tempest at Drury Lane will sort of complete a circle of coincidence for Weaver.
She’ll be taking on a role last performed there by Gielgud.
Her first Broadway credit in 1975 was to work on a revival of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Constant Wife, starring Ingrid Bergman.
Weaver worked as an assistant stage manager and understudy.
The production was directed by John Gielgud.