Breaking Baz: ‘The West Wing’ Alum Joshua Malina Heads To London For British Stage Debut In Provocative Comedy That Says “The Unsayable” About The War In Gaza
26.06.2024 - 11:53
/ deadline.com
EXCLUSIVE: The West Wing actor Joshua Malina will make his London stage bow in the fall playing a “secular, sarcastic, anti-religious Jew” who says “the unsayable” about Israel in what’s being billed as the European premiere of Nathan Englander’s adaptation of his 2012 short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank.
“It’s quite exciting to have Malina making his English debut,” said the show’s director, Patrick Marber.
Described by Marber as a “serious comedy with seriously funny jokes, but its purpose is serious,” the show will run October 4-November 23 at the Marylebone Theatre in London.
Marber and his producers Oliver King, Nina Tassler, David Daniels and Craig Dorfman are hoping to transfer into the West End after its run at the Marylebone.
And, they’re eager for the production to have “more life” after London.
“Off Broadway, Broadway subsidized — doesn’t matter,” Marber pleaded.
“We just want to see how it goes and whether people like it,” he told me.
Marber heard about the show when he was directing Malina two years ago on Broadway in Tom Stoppard’s Tony Award-winning play Leopoldstadt.
Malina had starred in an outta town production of What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego.
Marber, who’s also a playwright, read it and then got in touch with Englander, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his short fiction, about presenting the play in London.
It’s about two couples sitting at a kitchen table in Florida. ”One couple are religious Jews from Israel, and the other couple are secular Jews living in Florida,” Marber explained.
Over the past year, the two men have worked closely on it, ”so it’s a whole new thing, essentially a new play,” he added.
“But since