First published: 05 Dec 2008

Rachel Weisz is to star as Blanche DuBois in a new production of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire at the Donmar Warehouse next July.

The British actress is best known for her big screen work, with film credits including The Land Girls, The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, About A Boy, Definitely Maybe and The Constant Gardener, for which she won an Academy Award in 2006. On stage, Weisz was last seen in The Shape Of Things at the Almeida theatre in 2001, and before that Design For Living and Suddenly Last Summer in the West End.
 
This production of A Streetcar Named Desire, for which exact dates are yet to be confirmed, will be directed by Rob Ashford, who made his directorial debut with the Laurence Olivier Award-nominated production of Parade at the Donmar last year. Also a choreographer, Ashford previously choreographed Guys And Dolls at the Piccadilly theatre, Evita at the Adelphi and Thoroughly Modern Millie at the Shaftesbury.

Williams’s 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning play centres on faded Southern belle Blanche DuBois, who visits her sister Stella and Stella’s brutish husband Stanley in New Orleans, with devastating consequences.

The play was last produced in London at the National Theatre in 2002, with Glenn Close as Blanche and Iain Glen as Stanley, directed by Trevor Nunn.

Further casting for this new production at the Donmar Warehouse is yet to be announced.

CB