She’s a household name in the Netherlands, and now Dutch actress Halina Reijn makes her first performing English speaking role in London in Ivo van Hove’s stage adaption of Luchino Visconti’s 1943 Italian neo-realism film OBSESSION at the Barbican.

It’s part of the multi-award winning Belgian director’s Avante Garde Theatre company, Toneelgroep Amsterdam’s four play residency at the London venue. Halina is Hanna, the abused wife of a bullying hotel proprietor, who has a passionate love affair with drifter Gino played by Jude Law.

“Reijn in some ways is even more extraordinary,” wrote Michael Billington in the Guardian. “She starts with the right air of anguished solitude, is quickened into life by the presence of the charismatic stranger and later sets about reordering her existence with a conscienceless practicality. It says something about Law and Reijn that, for a moment, I saw the couple as a modern version of the Macbeth.”

I met the very engaging Halina before last Saturday’s matinee and she was more than happy with my drawing and signed it. The production, which runs until 20 May, screens nationwide in selected UK cinemas tonight as part of National Theatre Live.