James Corden is to return to the London stage for his first role since the National Theatre’s blockbuster farce One Man, Two Guvnors.
The star, who last year left his US late-night talkshow after eight years, will appear in a new political drama by Joe Penhall. The Constituent, at the Old Vic theatre, is set in an MP’s constituency office. Corden will play “an ex-serviceman with a life in freefall” while Anna Maxwell Martin (Motherland, Line of Duty) is an opposition backbencher whose ideals of public office are tested by his demands. Zachary Hart completes the cast as a parliamentary protection officer. The play will be directed by the Old Vic’s artistic director, Matthew Warchus, and is said to explore “the conflict between public service and personal safety”.
Penhall, whose plays include Blue/Orange and the Kinks musical Sunny Afternoon, said that he began writing The Constituent four years ago when he became “fascinated and appalled by the growing antipathy towards elected politicians”. Warchus described the play as “urgently topical” and said it asked: “In a landscape of increasing threat, what place is there for empathy? Is an open-door policy now dependent on stab vests?”
The intimidation of MPs, candidates and councillors was the subject of a roundtable meeting with police chiefs in Downing Street in February. Home secretary James Cleverly has announced £31m in government funding for measures to protect MPs, including private bodyguards to provide round-the-clock protection. A report in January by the Jo Cox Foundation, named after the MP for Batley and Spen who was murdered on her way to a constituency surgery in 2016, found that abuse and intimidation of elected representatives is having “a detrimental impact on democracy in the UK”.
Harriet Harman has called on both Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak to ensure that this year’s general election campaign is not marred by threats to candidates’ safety. “The responsibility for ensuring that MPs are able to get on with their work lies not with them as individuals or their party or the government,” said Harman. “It lies with parliament.”
The announcement of The Constituent comes amid a run of politically engaged plays in major London theatres, including a version of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, in which Matt Smith takes part in a climactic Question Time-style debate with the audience, and Tim Price’s Nye at the National Theatre, which stars Michael Sheen as Aneurin Bevan, founder of the NHS.
The Constituent will run at the Old Vic from 13 June to 10 August and tickets go on sale on Wednesday. Warchus said: “In a theatre once mainly renowned for classic revivals, I’m excited to present the Old Vic’s 25th world premiere since my tenure began in 2015.” The Old Vic is currently staging Just for One Day, a musical about Live Aid, and is about to present a transfer of Sophie Treadwell’s play Machinal, starring Rosie Sheehy, which was acclaimed last year in Bath.
Corden trained as a theatre actor at Jackie Palmer Stage School in Buckinghamshire whose alumni include Eddie Redmayne and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. He had a role in the ensemble in the West End musical Martin Guerre in 1996 before making a name for himself in film and TV. He reprised his stage role in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, a National Theatre sensation that went on an international tour, for a 2006 film version also directed by Nicholas Hytner.
Hytner then reunited with Corden in 2011 for Richard Bean’s One Man, Two Guvnors, a riotous comedy based on Carlo Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters. It was Corden’s turn in that production that led to his late-night TV series, as he was seen in the play on Broadway by the former CBS executive Les Moonves. Corden won a Tony award for best actor in a play for One Man, Two Guvnors, beating Philip Seymour Hoffman, James Earl Jones, Frank Langella and John Lithgow.
