Gillian returns to the London stage
Posted at 5:25 AM (PST) on Friday, January 16, 2004

What's on Stage News

Anderson Returns with Royal Court's Swing
by Terri Paddock

X Files star Gillian Anderson - who won last year's Whatsonstage.com Theatregoers' Choice Best Actress Award for her West End debut in What the Night Is For - will return to the London stage this spring. She'll appear in the world premiere of Rebecca Gilman's The Sweetest Swing in Baseball, which opens at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs on 31 March 2004 (previews from 25 March), continuing to 1 May.

For The Sweetest Swing in Baseball, she'll be joined in the cast by Nancy Crane and Kate Harper. The production will be directed by Royal Court artistic director Ian Rickson.

Rebecca Gilman's previous plays include The Glory of Living (which won her the 1999 Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright), Spinning into Butter and the Olivier-nominated Boy Gets Girl. The new piece concerns a painter whose ambitions are challenged when her latest exhibition is poorly received by critics.

NOTE: Booking for The Sweetest Swing in Baseball does not open until 26 January 2004.

The Boston Globe, Oct. 24, 2003:

Gilman, who lives in Chicago with her husband, has just completed a commission for the Royal Court Theatre, called "The Sweetest Swing in Baseball," about an artist who has a nervous breakdown and who pretends she's former baseball player Darryl Strawberry to stay in the hospital longer.

"Like everything else I do," she says, "it's a dark comedy."