Seventeen years after she caused a sensation in the West End (and later Broadway) for a flash of nudity in her celebrated performance in David Hare‘s The Blue Room, Nicole Kidman is set to return to the U.K.’s theater capital.
On Thursday, it was announced that the actress will take the lead in the U.K. premiere of Anna Ziegler’s Photograph 51, being staged at London’s Noel Coward Theater by director Michael Grandage. Part of the Michael Grandage Company season, the production will run Sept. 5-Nov. 21.
The play, named after the X-ray image that provided the crucial starting point for DNA research, will star Kidman as Rosalind Franklin, the researcher at King’s College London who oversaw the original discovery of the DNA double-helix. Despite her crucial role, Franklin’s contribution was largely overlooked, and she was excluded from the 1962 Nobel Prize shared by Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins.
Photograph 51 reunites Kidman with Grandage following their recent work on the upcoming biographical drama Genius, which marks the stage director’s first move into features.
