Hayley Atwell says the political drama played out on stage in her West End show makes it “very much a play for our time”.
The Avengers: Endgame star said Henrik Ibsen’s Rosmersholm, written in 1886 and about a country in a state of political flux, is more relevant today than ever. She told the Standard that “worryingly very little” has changed since the play was written, saying: “That’s why you can hear people laughing and gasping in the audience, and they’re going, ‘Oh, hello?’
“In this time of political unrest that we have now, it’s very reflective of what he [Ibsen] was seeing when he went to Norway at the time and saw what he thought was a sham democracy.
“There was a cultural elite that was governing. What he was wanting to do with this play is say, ‘We all need to take full responsibility and a duty to our thoughts and our own actions’. ”
Atwell, 37, said Ibsen’s view that the powerless could change society struck a chord with modern audiences, adding: “That sense of unrest and that call to arms I think is something that is happening in a very exciting way with people taking to the streets to protest and using things like social media to say what needs to be said and fight the good fight.”
The actress, who starred as Peggy Carter in the Agent Carter TV series and in the Captain America films, said she would like to see more people from non-elite backgrounds in power, adding: “It does feel like we are in a bit of a sham democracy at the moment. This is very much a play for our time.”
The production at the Duke of York’s Theatre also features Tom Burke as John Rosmer, head of a family dynasty, who debates politics with free-spirited Rebecca West, played by Atwell, and Andreas Kroll (Hamilton’s Giles Terera) as an election looms. Burke, 37, who plays JK Rowling’s detective Cormoran Strike on TV, said he would like current politicians to see the play.
