BAFTA-winning film director and Company of Ten patron Mike Newell paid a surprise visit to the Abbey Theatre Studio last Wednesday to see the company’s sell-out production of The Thrill of Love.
The story of the complex life of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, was of special significance to Newell as his award-winning film Dance with a Stranger tackled the same story from a different perspective in 1985.
Mike – whose parents Terry and Mollie Newell were two of the company’s ‘Ten’ founding members – went on to direct many other highly successful films, including Four Weddings and a Funeral and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Chatting to director Philip Reardon and the cast after the show, he described the production as ‘terrific’ and complimented Philip and the five actors on their excellent and stylish staging of an enthralling and moving play.
He said the production reached much further inside Ruth’s head than the film had done and that all the actors added enormously to the telling of a very powerful story.
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