Kevin Spacey to return as Clarence Darrow for Old Vic swansong
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Version 0 of 1. Kevin Spacey was one of the hottest tickets in London when he performed just 22 performances of the one-man show Clarence Darrow back in June 2014. Now he’s returning to the Old Vic for a six-week second run from 3 March. Related: Matthew Warchus to take Kevin Spacey's role running the Old Vic It will be the final performance Spacey will make as artistic director of the theatre, which he has presided over since 2003. He hands over to his successor, Matthew Warchus, later in the year. “As my time at the helm of the Old Vic is drawing to a close, it felt the right choice to bring back Clarence Darrow,” Spacey said in a statement. “I had such a short run with the production last year and so many didn’t get the chance to see it, that it felt like a great opportunity to do a longer run.” He has performed the role of Darrow – a radical and theatrical lawyer who fought on behalf of African-Americans, evolutionists and others in the 1920s – a number of times before. As well as the one-man show, written by David W Rintels, Spacey played Darrow in a TV movie in 1991, and in a 2009 Old Vic production of Inherit the Wind. “Perhaps it is true what they say, if you do something long enough you just might get good at it,” Spacey added. “I look forward to sharing Darrow’s remarkable, inspiring life one more time in London.” In a four-star review, the Guardian’s Michael Billington praised Spacey’s first run as “a mighty performance that brings out Darrow’s bravura humanitarianism”. Clarence Darrow will run until 11 April. Spacey, meanwhile, continues his Golden Globe-winning turn as a Machiavellian US politician in House of Cards, returning to Netflix on 27 February. He’s currently filming Elvis & Nixon, which documents the meeting between the King and the then-president, with Spacey as Nixon and Michael Shannon as Elvis. |