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Keira Knightley caused a major splash with her last – and to date, only – West End roles, starring in Molière’s The Misanthrope and Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour at the height of her late ’00/early ’10s fame.
Knightley has famously adopted a lower profile since becoming a mother a decade ago, but this autumn she’ll return to the stage in an extremely cool theatre project that’s very much in line with her hipper middle aged screen output.
She’s the biggest name in superstar director Robert Icke’s new adaptation of The Lives of Others, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s the Academy Award-winning 2006 thriller about Stasi surveillance of an East German neighbourhood during the last years of the Berlin Wall.
Icke is best known for his Shakespeare plays – his Romeo & Juliet is currently in the West End – and self-penned adaptation of classic plays (like recent hit Oedipus), though this will be his first foray into film adaptation – something that his idol Ivo van Hove is a big fan of.
While Knightley is the biggest name as actress Christa-Maria Sieland, her male co-stars aren’t far behind: she’ll be joined by Game of Thrones and The Hours man Stephen Dillane as Stasi agent Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, and Bridgerton’s Luke Thompson as Georg Dreyman, the playwright – and lover to Christa-Maria – that Gerd is spying upon.
Icke is superb writing about the complications of human emotion, and is profoundly unlikely to get bogged down in dodgy accents – expect something special.
The Lives of Others is at the Adelphi Theatre, Oct 29-Jan 9 2027. Tickets are on sale now.
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