Tony winner Stephen Dillane, Anne-Marie Duff, Christian Camargo and Juliet Rylance will lead the cast in the second season of Sam Mendes’ Bridge Project, which will present two productions at BAM and at London’s Old Vic. A double bill of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and As You Like It are on tap, both directed by Mendes.
As You Like It, featuring Dillane as Jaques, Duff as Rosalind, Camargo as Orlando and Rylance as Celia, will open at BAM’s Harvey Theater in January 2010. The Tempest, with Dillane as Prospero, Duff as Ariel, Camargo as Stephano and Rylance as Miranda, will open in February. The two productions will then embark on an international tour of Asia and Europe before arriving at the Old Vic in the summer of 2010. The full company will again be drawn from leading American and British actors, with further casting to be announced shortly.
Dillane won a Best Actor Tony for the Broadway revival of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing and was recently seen as Thomas Jefferson in the HBO miniseries John Adams. Anne-Marie Duff, who stared in Saint Joan at the National Theatre and in the BBC mini-series Elizabeth—The Virgin Queen, will make her American stage debut.
Camargo appeared on Broadway in last season’s revival of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons and won raves for his Hamlet earlier this year at Theater for a New Audience. Rylance recently played Desdemona in Othello at Theater for a New Audience and has performed at Shakespeare’s Globe in London and the Chichester Festival Theatre.
The Bridge Project is a three-year series of co-productions by BAM, the Old Vic and Mendes’ Neal Street Productions designed to present large-scale classical theater featuring a trans-Atlantic company of actors. Its successful first season paired Mendes’ productions of The Cherry Orchard and The Winter’s Tale, which are running at the Old Vic until August 15 and will conclude on August 22 at Epidaurus, Greece, as part of the Athens & Epidaurus Festival. Actors participating in the initial season included Ethan Hawke, Josh Hamilton, Sinead Cusack and Rebecca Hall.