BREAKING NEWS DAMIAN LEWIS RETURNS TO THE STAGE !!!!!!!

CONFIRMED !!!!!!!!

Damian Lewis stars in Mamet's American Buffalo at Wyndham's Theatre

Damian Lewis is returning to the London stage in a play that he hails as a ‘tragic tale for our times’.

The actor will star in David Mamet’s blistering classic American Buffalo in the spring.

‘I wanted to get back to the stage, but I didn’t want to do it unless it was a great play,’ the actor, whose last West End outing was in The Misanthrope opposite Keira Knightley five years ago, told me yesterday.

American Buffalo certainly fits that bill. Mamet’s 1975 drama’s about three ineffective petty hustlers attempting to diddle a man out of a rare US coin. The men view their low-grade criminality purely as business, with a bit of violence attached.

Damian, who won awards for his performance as soldier Nicholas Brody in TV hit Homeland and will be seen on BBC2 next month, portraying Henry VIII in the Beeb’s six-part adaptation of Wolf Hall, said he caught William H. Macy as Teach (the part he will take) in a version of American Buffalo that ran at the Donmar Warehouse 14 years ago.

Lewis recalled being struck by the ‘claustrophobia of these three disenfranchised working class men’, unable to make anything of their lives.

He said the piece was funny ‘in some places’, but added that it’s also a ‘tragic tale for our times’ because ‘it’s not hard to imagine groups of young men, unemployed, sitting in bars and cafes, thinking: “How the hell can we make some dough, because times are tough?” ’

He observed that for the trio in Mamet’s play, ‘the opportunities of life have simply passed by — or they have failed to take them’.

They’re scrabbling for their personal health, mental health, and pride. And I think that’s a common experience for a lot of people at the moment who are searching for ways to scratch a living.’

American Buffalo continues to resonate because it shatters the myth of the American Dream. Teach and his pals know it doesn’t exist, for them at least.

Lewis said he and Matthew Byam Shaw, a partner in Playful Productions, had been batting ideas around for some time but the conversation shifted into (as he put it) ‘kick b****cks, scramble!’ mode once the actor’s availability aligned with a window of opportunity at the much in-demand Wyndham’s Theatre.

It’s a minor miracle that it came together so fast,’ said Lewis, who praised Byam Shaw for ‘not giving up’.

American Buffalo will begin performances at Wyndham’s for a limited ten and a half week season from April 16, but it must end on June 27.

In January and February, Lewis shoots the pilot episode of Billions, a new thriller for Showtime in which he plays a seriously rich hedge fund magnate.

He then proceeds to American Buffalo, which is being directed by Daniel Evans, artistic chief of Sheffield Theatres, before returning to Billlions, filming the full first season from July to December.

The director and leading man became friends when both studied acting at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Lewis noted that any drama student now would have been five when American Buffalo was last seen in London, back in 2000.

Producer Byam Shaw said he would be arranging some affordable seats for students, but prices haven’t been set yet.

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read here what Damian Lewis and director Daniel Evans saying..

Award-winning Homeland star Damian Lewis is returning to the London stage - but admits he has battled for two years to make it happen.

The actor, whose last play was The Misanthrope in 2009 with Keira Knightley, will star in David Mamet’s dark drama American Buffalo in the spring.

He said it was “one of the great plays of the 20th century by one of the great living playwrights” and “a play I really wanted to do”. 

But it was “a minor miracle” that they had pulled it off because theatre was booming. “It is more difficult to find a theatre, book a director, line all the ducks up in a row to get something on,” he said.

I’ve tried about three or four times in the last couple of years and things have fallen apart. With theatre, you have to plan almost a year in advance. But we got lucky - a theatre was available.”

Lewis, 43, will play Teach - the role taken by Dustin Hoffman in the 1996 film - in the story of three working-class small-time crooks.

It will be directed by Daniel Evans, whom he has known since training at the Guildhall in London. Lewis conceded that he, an old Etonian, and Evans, a gay Welshman, were not “on the face of it natural fits” for the story of blue-collar desperation: “It’s a big challenge, of course, but that is what is attractive about it. My experience in life is not that of these guys in the play.”

Yet, he said: ”When I play Americans, I tend to play lower American types for whatever reason.”

Having won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his role as Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody in Homeland, his new TV series is Billionaires in which he plays a self-made man - though he does work his way up to be a hedge fund manager. He will be filming alongside Paul Giamatti, as a district attorney, before and after his West End run.

Going on stage was “always terrifying, but terrifying in a good way,” Lewis added.

He grew up in theatre and met his wife, Helen McCrory, at the AlmeidaL “Television and film have been a lovely big sort of accident. But I quickly learned what wonderful projects there were to work on if you were lucky enough to be invited. So theatre has taken a bit of a back seat.”

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