As You Desire Me

Play Opened 27 October 2005, Closed 22 January 2006

Playhouse Theatre Northumberland Avenue, London

A major revival of Luigi Pirandello's play, As You Desire Me, presented in a new adaptation by Hugh Whitemore, directed by Jonathan Kent with designs by Paul Brown.

Starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Bob Hoskins with Margaret Tyzack, John Carlisle, Tessa Churchard, Stephanie Jacob, Richard Lintern, Finbar Lynch, Andrew Woodall and Hannah Young.

"Jonathan Kent's wonderfully astute and stylish production" The Independent

A man meets an amnesiac Budapest cabaret entertainer in a Berlin night club and he believes she could be the wife he has long believed dead back in Italy. She falls in love with him to the fury of the man who is in charge of protecting and shaping her career...

"Dazzling Kristin Scott Thomas' West End triumph" The London Evening Standard

"Given a rare revival by Jonathan Kent, As You Desire Me is a fascinatingly mercurial portrait of a lady which raises far-reaching questions about our suggestible minds and our dubious grasp of our own and others' personalities... Hugh Whitemore's new English version is inconspicuously excellent and Kent's stylish production is scintillating, with Otto Dix-style dark-poisoned elegance in Berlin, then, in Italy, a light and spacious yet decaying ballroom... Scott Thomas is superb. She is mesmerising in her opening scene... then in Italy, she seems more girlish and tender but keeps switching between her split personalities. Catch her if you can." The Independent on Sunday

"Thrilling, powerful, gripping - Kristin Scott Thomas gives an extraordinary performance. Bob Hoskins is splendid - What a pleasure to discover this superb revival" The Daily Telegraph

"Jonathan Kent's handsome production pulls off a rare thing: it makes you see the point of Pirandello's theatrical games. Kristin Scott Thomas plays Elma quite marvellously... [Her] remarkable achievement is that she is never upstaged by her gorgeous dresses. Hard as nails, quick-witted, a chameleon with a disorientating downmarket vulgarity, she keeps us guessing about her true identity. In so doing, she makes us think carefully about how any of us might prove who we really are... Hugh Whitemore's compelling new version of the play guarantees a fascinating evening." The Mail on Sunday

"[The] first act is worryingly ponderous, even if Scott Thomas is silkily capricious as the drunken, jaded Elma. As the issue of her identity becomes more important, however, Jonathan Kent’s production gains enough height to match the play’s intellectual somersaults, spinning through a dizzying Martin Guerre-style story that asks whether identity comes from who you are, or who you say you are... [Kristin Scott Thomas] she captures all Elma's mercurial mystery, the initial boozy decadence ebbing away to reveal a woman capable of both intense vulnerability and tough defiance. Never hysterical, she subtly depicts a woman who, for whatever reason, has lost a vital piece of her personality; who looks intact, yet sounds like a cracked bell. It should also be made known that she can sing cabaret numbers about sex appeal with vampish conviction." The Sunday Times

"As translated and trimmed by Hugh Whitemore and directed by Jonathan Kent, the play absorbs as well as stimulates" The Times

"It's not easy to stage Luigi Pirandello these days. His big theme - the illusion of identity - is no longer startling; the action of his plays easily silts up with ambiguities and peek-a-boo personalities. But Jonathan Kent has pulled it off with his cool, gliding production of As You Desire Me in which he gives focus to a slippery plot without losing any of its mysteriousness... Hugh Whitemore's supple new version brings to life the idea that women have thought of themselves as others want them to be: 'I am - as you desire me.' Kristin Scott Thomas - willowy, casual and compelling - has a Dietrich-like ranginess as the artiste, an easy elegance as the putative aristo, and the perfect foil in Bob Hoskins, a man born to rasp threateningly in a silk dressing gown." The Observer