Oscar-winning actor Helen Mirren is to return to the stage of the National Theatre to play the title role in Racine’s Phèdre next year.
Mirren, who won an Oscar for her performance in Stephen Frears’s 2006 film The Queen, will be directed by Nicholas Hytner, the National Theatre’s artistic director, next June.
The production will co-star Margaret Tyzack as the nurse Oenone – the veteran actor who has recently charmed audiences with her performance in Enid Bagnold’s The Chalk Garden at the Donmar Warehouse, London.
Mirren last performed at the National Theatre in 2004 to great acclaim, in Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra.
Racine’s Phèdre, premiered in 1677, is based on Euripides’s play Hippolytus. It relates the story of the fatal, illicit love that Queen Phèdre nurses for her stepston, Hippolyte.
More news from the National Theatre in tomorrow’s newspaper.