Lydia Wilson | ChicanePictures

fool-for-love

Sam Shepherd’s play FOOL FOR LOVE, a finalist for the 1984 Pulitzer Drama Prize is the final production this year at the intimate hipster pop-up venue Found 111 on the site of the old Central St Martin’s School of Art in London’s Charring Cross Rd. RIPPER STREET co-stars Adam Rothenberg and Lydia Wilson are former lovers Eddie and May, confined in a run-down motel room fighting for the love they can’t live with or without.

New Jersey-born Adam makes his London stage debut after a variety of American stage and screen performances. Fresh from blockbuster STAR TREK BEYOND, Lydia was last treading the local boards in her Olivier-nominated role as Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge in KING CHARLES III. I caught up with both of them after an evening performance last week and they signed my sketch.

The smash hit play, King Charles III, Mike Barlett’s mock Shakespearean play about a constitutional crisis when Charles succeeds his mother after her death. Time called it a “future history play”.

Directed by Rupert Goold, the pitch perfect production premiered at London’s Almeida Theatre on 10 April 2014, before transferring to Wyndham’s in the West End for a short sell out run late last year.

“It won’t blow the palace sky high. But it’s theatrical dynamite, nonetheless,” said Caroline McGinn in Time Out.

Lydia Wilson’s manipulating Duchess of Cambridge with a touch of Lady Macbeth puts pressure on Oliver Chris’s uncanny William to intervene in his father’s refusal to uphold Parliament’s decisions. Richard Goulding’s likeable and restless Harry falls in love with the liberating but ultimately unstable Jess, a punky republican art student played by Tafline Steen.