BAZ BAMIGBOYE: Sophie's in a brave new role... as the world's most powerful woman 

Actress Sophie Ward will star in a gender-swapping adaptation of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

Actress Sophie Ward will star in a gender-swapping adaptation of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

The actress Sophie Ward is about to become the most powerful person in the world.

Sophie will star in a gender-swapping adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s classic Brave New World, where the planet is ruled by ten controllers. The first among equals was, in the novel, Mustapha Mond, resident controller for West Europe.

In the version adapted by playwright Dawn King, Mustapha has now become Margaret Mond.

King had already completed her switch by the time the production’s director James Dacre cast Ward.

The actress said that the switch to Margaret ‘seemed like a natural extension of the world Huxley had built, to include the social changes in gender equality in the past 80 years’.

She added that the controller’s sex focuses a modern audience on Huxley’s ideas about social engineering, ‘where people are divided into castes, and babies are produced in test tubes’.

King said her Mond character had a ‘strong sense of her own personal morality’, combined with a ‘real steely authority’.

In an email exchange, I remarked to Ward that Margaret Mond sounded a lot like a former occupant of 10 Downing Street.

‘As for the Thatcher connection, I couldn’t possibly comment,’ she joked back.

The actress observed that when she first read the book as a teenager, the dystopian world where babies were ‘decanted’ from test tubes and the government controlled people by making them watch plug-in ‘feelies’ — a physical experience at the movies — seemed far-fetched.

‘Now, the ideology seems uncomfortably familiar,’ she commented.

Ward was spending time in Los Angeles — where Huxley once lived it up on mind-bending drugs. But she said she was there to write in the sun, and her interest in LA was ‘literary rather than chemical’.

She will be returning to England for rehearsals that start in two weeks. Brave New World begins performances at the Royal & Derngate Theatre in Northampton on September 4 until September 24, after which it will embark on a UK tour through the Touring Consortium Theatre Company.

The ensemble also includes Abigail McKern, Scott Karim and William Postlethwaite, who plays the story’s hero John, the noble savage.

 

Mission Incredible

Rebecca Ferguson told me how she trained for months so she was match-fit to play opposite Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible — Rogue Nation.

Now that I’ve seen a rough cut of the thriller, I can see why. She performs killer thigh moves (just wait!) and has to knock out bad guys twice her size.

‘We would go on long runs and I’d try to keep up with Tom. I’d whisper in his ear: “Please slow down!” He was a perfect gent, and would do so,’ Ferguson said.

Rebecca Ferguson trained for months so she could keep up with 'perfect gent' Tom Cruise, she reveals

Rebecca Ferguson trained for months so she could keep up with 'perfect gent' Tom Cruise, she reveals

In the blockbuster Rebecca Ferguson performs killer thigh moves and beats up bad guys twice her size
Actress Rebecca Ferguson

In the blockbuster Rebecca Ferguson performs killer thigh moves and beats up bad guys twice her size

In the film, the team go after members of the mysterious Syndicate. Director Christopher McQuarrie builds the action to such a pitch you’re not on the edge of your seat (one great sequence is at the Vienna Opera, during a performance of Turandot), you’re right outta it!

Cruise and McQuarrie worked closely on the development of Rogue Nation, which has nods to several classic action pictures.

There’s even a touch of Casablanca in Rebecca’s character Ilsa. I’m trying to remember if there’s anyone called Rick in the movie. I guess I’ll have to see it again, Sam!

 

Ella Garland, Lucy Laing, Andrew Seddon, Aqil Zahid and Lawrence Boothman, who lead director Natalie York’s adaptation of Twelfth Night — set in what Ms York described as a decadent Victorian music hall — into The Space Theatre in Westferry Road on the Isle of Dogs in East London.

With choreography by Thomas Michael Voss, the production runs at The Space from July 21 until August 8. Visit space.org.uk/event/twelfth-night-or-what-you-will/ or call 020 7515 7799 for ticket details.

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