Zoë Wanamaker: Medical play is optimistic look at the future

Wanamaker said Nick Payne’s Elegy was "very optimistic", adding that it asked "do we have control over ourselves and at what cost and why?"
Intriguing subject: from far left, director Josie Rourke, Zoë Wanamaker, Barbara Flynn and Nina Sosanya
Dan Wooller/REX
Robert Dex @RobDexES28 April 2016

In her latest play, Zoë Wanamaker stars as a woman who has radical brain surgery which robs her of her memories — but the actress says it is actually an optimistic story.

Wanamaker, 66, plays a middle-aged teacher who volunteers for the operation to cure a degenerative brain condition, despite the cost to her relationship, in Nick Payne’s Elegy at the Donmar Warehouse. She said her character’s dilemma was likely to be faced by many people in the future as advances in science create cures for previously untreatable diseases.

She said: “This is a very optimistic look at the future, the very near future. The wonderful thing about it is it poses the question constantly — do we have control over ourselves and at what cost and why? I think it’s very pertinent and I think it is very important that we should have the choice and every individual has their own decision to make.” Wanamaker stars alongside Barbara Flynn, 67, and Nina Sosanya, 46, in the three-hander.

Payne said there had been “no conscious reason” for the all-female cast. “I don’t think I gave it much thought is the really honest answer,” he said. “I sort of knew I wanted to write for a different generation, as in Barbara and Zoe’s generation, who I hadn’t really worked with before.”

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