Variety reports that Scott Thomas will headline the Pirandello play As You Desire Me. Not one of the Italian playwright’s best-known works, it follows a small spate of his plays in recent years: Joan Plowright starred in Franco Zeffirelli’s staging of Absolutely (Perhaps), while Ian McDiarmid led Henry IV. Duncan C. Weldon and Paul Elliott will produce. Jonathan Kent is poised to direct a new version of the play by Hugh Whitemore, with designer Paul Brown also on board. The play concerns a lady in 1920’s Europe who may or may not be who she says she is.
Kent told Variety of his delight at casting Scott Thomas. “This is a great part for Kristin,” he said., “The role is a kind of tabula rasa: a blank sheet onto which people write their own needs and desires.”
The actress has kept up a steady stream of film parts recently; 2005 sees her in “Man to Man” and “Chromophobia,” and there are two films already scheduled for 2006.