American Buffalo

Damian Lewis to star in West End revival of Mamet's American Buffalo

the Homeland star will return to the stage for the first time since 2009, in a production directed by Daniel Evans

Damian Lewis, the actor who gained global fame as Brody in Homeland, is to return to the London stage in a production of David Mamet’s American Buffalo.

Speaking to the Evening Standard, Lewis called it “one of the great plays of the 20th century by one of the great living playwrights”. American Buffalo will be directed by Daniel Evans, with whom Lewis trained at London’s Guildhall drama school, and will open at Wyndham’s Theatre on 16 April.

It’s the first play Lewis will have appeared in since 2009, when he performed opposite Keira Knightley in Molière’s The Misanthrope, though he has a rich history on the stage: he was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company for five years in the 1990s, and appeared opposite Ralph Fiennes on Broadway for a production of Hamlet. In 2005, he performed in Five Gold Rings with Helen McCrory, who later became his wife.

Lewis said that he’d been keen to return to the stage for some time. “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.”

American Buffalo is the blunt tale of a pair of junk-shop workers plotting to steal a valuable coin collection, and the Eton-educated Lewis admitted that the blue-collar milieu is far from his own. “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. When I play Americans, I tend to play lower American types for whatever reason.”

The play comes after a vibrant period of screen work for Lewis. As well as the ongoing Homeland, for which he won a Golden Globe in 2013, he can next be seen in Werner Herzog’s anticipated new film Queen of the Desert, opposite Nicole Kidman, James Franco and Robert Pattinson. 2015 will also see the release of The Silent Storm, a drama with Andrea Riseborough, and John Le Carré adaptation Our Kind of Traitor.

In November he was awarded an OBE, with Prince William telling him that he and the Duchess of Cambridge were big Homeland fans.