David Hare and Bill Nighy Launch Faber’s 75th Platform Series at National

By James Inverne
November 3, 2004

Bill Nighy will join David Hare for his National Theatre Platform on Nov. 5.

The 6 PM event launches the theatre publisher Faber’s 75th anniversary Platform series, in which leading playwrights (published by Faber) talk about one of their most successful works and actors perform excerpts.

In his Platform, Hare will talk about his play Plenty. As well as Nighy, actors appearing in the Plenty snippet will include Nancy Carroll and Julian Rhind-Tutt. Since his success with the 2003 film “Love Actually,” Nighy has been much in demand and is set to star in the forthcoming movie adaptation of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” His association both with Hare and the National stretches back many years and includes taking Hare’s Skylight from the NT to the West End in 1997.

Hare’s association with the National has never been stronger. Two of his plays, The Permanent Way and Stuff Happens, were staged there during 2004, and his new version of Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba will follow in 2005.

The other Faber Platforms will feature Tom Stoppard (Nov. 10), Tony Harrison (Nov. 16), Christopher Hampton (Dec. 3) and Frank McGuinness (Dec. 6). Stoppard will discuss Travesties, Harrison will talk about The Trackers of Oxyrhyncus and Square Rounds, Hampton about Tales From Hollywood, and McGuinness will look back on Dolly West’s Kitchen. The actors for those events have not yet been announced.

Meanwhile, at another Platform, on Nov. 4, the actor Malcolm McDowell will appear at the National to pay tribute to the director Lindsay Anderson. It was Anderson who gave McDowell one of his seminal movie hits, 1969’s “If…,” and employed him in two further films, 1973’s “O Lucky Man!” and 1982’s “Britannia Hospital.” Ten years after Anderson’s death, McDowell’s tribute is drawn from the director’s own writings. He previously performed the tribute in Edinburgh, and brings it to London in advance of the National Film Theatre’s season of Anderson’s films (which runs between Nov. 7 and 30).

For more details about the National Theatre’s Platforms series, call (0)20 7452 3000.