Cambridge Premieres Pearl Earring Pre-West End

Tag : pearl earring

The stage version of Tracy Chevaliers best-selling novel The Girl With a Pearl Earring , which has already been adapted for the big screen, will receiveits world premiere this autumn at the Cambridge Arts Theatre whereit will run from 11 to 20 September 2008, ahead of a planned WestEnd transfer.
Chevaliers 1999 historical novel was inspired by 17th-centuryDutch painter Johannes Vermeers masterpiece of the same name(pictured). In the fictional story, Vermeer hires the teenage girlGriet to help in his house. But its not long before she becomesmore than just a servant: she starts to help him in his studio,learning the art of painting by watching the master. And then,secretly, Vermeer begins to paint her, asking her to pose for hismost famous portrait.
In the 2003 Hollywood film, Scarlett Johansson starred as Grietwith Colin Firth as Vermeer. In Shelagh Stephenson s stage version, the parts are taken by Kimberley Nixon and Adrian Dunbar . Nixon was most recently seen on TV as Sophy Hutton in Cranford and in the current film release Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging .
Irish actor Adrian Dunbar is perhaps best known for 1991s highly acclaimed Hear My Song , which he also co-wrote, earning a BAFTA nomination. His manyother screen credits include the films My Left Foot, The Crying Game and The General and Cracker, Whistleblowers and Suspicion on television. He made his West End debut last year in Sixties sexfarce Boeing-Boeing .
Playwright Shelagh Stephenson s own original plays include The Memory of Water, Five Kinds of Silence, Mappa Mundi and An Experiment With an Air Pump . The Girl With a Pearl Earring is presented by Andrew Welch, who recently revived Shadowlands in the West End with Charles Dance and Janie Dee. No West Enddates or venue has yet been confirmed