Jude Law has signed up to return to the London stage this summer following his triumph in Hamlet for the Donmar in the West End and on Broadway.
The Oscar-nominated actor will star with award-winning Ruth Wilson in American playwright Eugene O’Neill’s ferocious drama Anna Christie, about a battered young woman.
After becoming a prostitute — and being raped by a cousin when she was a teenager — Anna finds redemption and, perhaps, love with Mat, who is described as handsome ‘in a hard, defiant way’, and who works as a stoker on a canal barge.
Law will play the powerful, broad-chested Mat opposite Ruth, who won a best-supporting actress Olivier Award for her role as Stella alongside Rachel Weisz’s Blanche in the Donmar Theatre’s A Streetcar Named Desire production 18 months ago.
Rob Ashford directed Streetcar and he will also stage Anna Christie at the Donmar, with performances starting on August 4 and an official opening on August 9. The production will have an extended run until October 8.
