Helen Mirren is getting all Shakespearean on us with her new film The Tempest , which has just debuted its first poster online.
Playing the traditionally male role of Prospero, Mirren leads a cast that includes Russell Brand, Alfred Molina, Djimon Hounsou, Alan Cumming and Chris Cooper.
The original plot follows the banished Prospero's ambitions to restore his daughter to her rightful place, but the character has undergone a sex change for Julia Taymor’s adaptation. Mirren thinks the gender bender works…
“Every time you do a Shakespeare role, it’s reinterpreted for the era, for the time,” she says, “That’s why you can have 20 Hamlet s in a year, and never see the same one. I play it as a woman.
“A while ago, I was watching the play in its traditional form with the great Derek Jacobi playing Prospero. And I was thinking, ‘A woman could play this.’ We hardly changed a line of dialogue.
"The only thing you have to change is the back-story at the very beginning. And even that fits perfectly. Instead of being a Duke, she’s a Duchess who’s been dethroned. Thrown out.”
Check out the poster below…
The Tempest will close the Venice Film Festival and opens in the UK later this year.
Think Mirren can pull it off? Drop us a line…
