Joshua Jackson to Co-Star with Patrick Stewart in London A Life in the Theatre

By James Inverne
October 22, 2004

Joshua Jackson, the Canadian heartthrob best known for his role as Pacey in TV’s “Dawson’s Creek,” is set to make his West End stage debut.

Jackson will appear in David Mamet’s A Life in the Theatre at the Apollo Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue beginning Jan. 27, 2005, according to the Daily Mail. In a high-profile pairing, Jackson will play opposite Patrick Stewart, who also found wider fame through the small screen, with his role as Captain Picard in “Star Trek—The Next Generation,” before big-screen blockbusters like “The X-Men.” But Stewart, a Royal Shakespeare Company veteran, has remained a regular stage visitor, last appearing in the West End in 2003 as Ibsen’s The Master Builder.

Jackson, on the other hand, told the Daily Mail that he has not acted on a stage since he was eight when he played Charlie in an adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. “Consider me slightly nerve-wrecked,” he told the newspaper, “but that’s part of the fun, isn’t it?”

Lindsay Posner will direct, in what will constitute a follow-up to his equally starry London production of Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago. That show, which featured Matthew Perry, Minnie Driver, Hank Azaria and Kelly Reilly, drew mixed notices but full houses.

Opening night at the Apollo is set for Feb. 2.