The French actor Isabelle Huppert is to return to the London stage for the first time in 20 years in a retelling of a Greek myth.
Huppert, the most nominated female actor for the César award, the French equivalent of the Bafta, will take the lead in Phaedra at the Barbican in June 2016.
The 62-year-old has appeared in more than 100 film and television productions, including the critically acclaimed Michael Haneke films The Piano Teacher and Amour.
Huppert will lead an international lineup of artists in the Barbican’s 2016 season.
Sir Nicholas Kenyon, the managing director of the Barbican, said: “Our new season is an exemplar of our dynamic international programme at its best, and with a record 1.2 million audience figure this year, the Barbican continues to prove it’s a place that people are passionate about.”
Huppert made her film debut in 1972 with Faustine et le Bel Eté, but her international breakthrough came in 1977 with La Dentelliere, or The Lacemaker, for which she won a Bafta for most promising newcomer to leading film roles.
She is one of only four women to have twice won best actress at the Cannes film festival – in 1978 for her role in Violette Nozière and in 2001 for The Piano Teacher.
On the stage, Huppert recently co-starred with Cate Blanchett in Sydney Theatre Company’s The Maids by Jean Genet, which was taken to New York for 13 performances last year.
In Greek mythology, Phaedra was a mysterious queen who fell in love with her stepson. The Barbican production will be staged by Krzysztof Warlikowski, the artistic director of Warsaw’s Nowy Teatr, and is based on Sarah Kane’s play Phaedra’s Love, as well as JM Coetzee’s novel Elizabeth Costello. It relocates Phaedra’s story in the modern world, taking in fresh material from the Lebanese-Canadian playwright Wajdi Mouawad.
The play will be performed in French with English surtitles.
