The Duchess of Malfi

Eve Best is to star in The Duchess of Malfi written by John Webster, which opens at the Old Vic Theatre on 28th Mar 2012, following previews from 17th Mar 2012, running to 09th Jun 2012.
Directed by Jamie Lloyd, lighting by James Farncombe, design by Soutra Gilmour, music and sound by Ben & Max Ringham and produced by Old Vic Theatre.

Eve Best last appeared at The Old Vic in London and on Broadway opposite Kevin Spacey in A Moon for the Misbegotten in the 2006/2007 Season. She last appeared on the London stage in Much Ado About Nothing at the Shakespeare Globe earlier this year.

The Duchess of Malfi is a macabre, tragic play written by the English dramatist John Webster around 1612-1613. It was first performed privately at the Blackfriars Theatre, then before a more general audience at The Globe in 1613-14.

Published in 1623, the play is loosely based on events that occurred between about 1508 and 1513, recounted in William Painter's The Palace of Pleasure in 1567. The Duchess was Giovanna d'Aragona, whose father, Arrigo d'Aragona, Marquis of Gerace, was an illegitimate son of Ferdinand I of Naples. Her husbands were Alfonso Piccolomini, Duke of Amalfi, and Antonio Bologna.

The play begins as a love story, with a Duchess who marries beneath her class, and ends as a nightmarish tragedy as her two brothers exact their revenge, destroying themselves in the process.

Old Vic Theatre