David Haig will be reunited with Daniel Radcliffe in the forthcoming Old Vic production of Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead
David Haig is looking forward to being reunited with Daniel Radcliffe for the first time in a decade.
The pair appeared together in the screen version of Haig’s play My Boy Jack, about Rudyard Kipling’s search for his son, who was fighting in the trenches during World War I.
Haig (right) has now been cast as the Player — a role he described as a ‘Shakespearean Barnum’ — in the forthcoming Old Vic production of Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard’s ingenious first hit about two minor characters from Hamlet who are given centre stage.
Radcliffe will play Rosencrantz, with Joshua Maguire as Guildenstern.
Haig, who starred in the TV film of Witness For The Prosecution on BBC TV over the Christmas break, said he will be working with director David Leveaux to ‘re-evaluate’ the ringmaster role in the Stoppard comedy. Although he took part in one of the Old Vic’s 24 Hour Plays, Rosencrantz And Guildenstern will mark his official Old Vic debut. And the actor said he enjoyed working with Radcliffe (left), who was then trying to carve out a professional identity for himself that wasn’t forever linked with Harry Potter.
‘He’s very shrewd,’ Haig said. ‘The great thing about Dan is that he’s interested in other people, and other things. You feel that you are talking to somebody who’s properly grounded.’
In other casting, Luke Mullins will play Hamlet, Marianne Oldham is Gertrude, Helen Wilson will be Ophelia, William Chubb is Polonius, and Louisa Beadel one of the players.
