ErmengardeStopSniveling said: "AC126748 said: "For years, there were rumors that Desiree would be Emma Thompson's return to the stage. She's a bit old for the part now, but when she was the right age, she would have been perfect. She has the humor and the vulnerability needed for the part."
She's perfect for that part. Perfect.
I don't think Desiree's age is so much the problem (Judi Dench was 61 and Bernadette was 62)...it's Fredrik. Especially nowadays, a 60-year-old man married to an18-year-old woman is really cringey."
Desiree is meant to have been an ingenue when she and Fredrik were first lovers, and is now a mid-career leading lady during the events on the musical. To me, she should be 40-45. (Keep in mind, too, that she's meant to have a 13-year-old daughter). The role has been played well by some older actresses, although Peters certainly reads younger onstage.
Thompson was envisioned for the Trevor Nunn production that instead opened in London with Hannah Waddingham (34 at the time) and on Broadway with Catherine Zeta-Jones (40). If Thompson had opened the London production she would have been 49 at the time, roughly the same age as Glynis Johns when she originated the role.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body