Minnie Driver signs up for lead role as Every Brilliant Thing comes to West End
For Driver it marks a return to the venue where she performed White Rabbit Red Rabbit for one night last November. That theatrical experiment required a different actor to perform the play, sight unseen, each time. Driver, who shot to fame in the 1990s films Circle of Friends and Good Will Hunting, is no stranger to the London stage. In 2003 she starred in the West End alongside Matthew Perry in David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago.
Every Brilliant Thing, written by Duncan Macmillan with Donahoe, is based around a list created by the narrator to remind his mum, after her first suicide attempt, of everything that's worth living for. 'I have wanted to do a play in London again for the longest time,' said Driver. 'I didn't want to take on a big classical role, walk down a well-trodden path. I wanted to find something that would be new to a lot of audiences, that was both funny and sad and unique in its storytelling – something unusual that you'd talk about on the train home, think about the next day at work. I knew how I wanted it to make me feel, I just didn't know what it was. Then I read Duncan's play.'
Driver said that 'the thought of doing a one-person show is like staring up at an enormous mountain that you're expected to free solo', but added that the play's 'clarity, humanity and humour struck me really deeply. I am terrified and excited in equal measure to tell this brilliant, beautiful story and to be in such a great company.'
The play's run has now been extended to 8 November. It will be directed by Jeremy Herrin and Macmillan, marking the show's West End debut after being performed in more than 80 countries and adapted into a film.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
5 minutes ago
- The Independent
Duke and Duchess of Westminster ‘thrilled' as they welcome first child
The Duke and Duchess of Westminster have announced the birth of their first child. Billionaire aristocrat Hugh Grosvenor and his wife Olivia, who married last year, have welcomed a baby girl born in London on Sunday, named Cosima Florence Grosvenor. 'The Duke and Duchess of Westminster are thrilled to announce the birth of their baby daughter,' a spokesperson for the couple said. 'Both the duchess and Cosima are doing well. 'The duke and duchess now look forward to spending this special time together as a family.' The duke, one of the UK's biggest landowners, is a close friend of both the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex, and godfather to Prince George and also reportedly to Prince Archie. William acted as an usher at his wedding in Chester Cathedral in June last year but Harry mutually agreed with the groom he would not attend amid his long-running rift with his brother. Hugh, once considered one of the country's most eligible bachelors, became an instant billionaire when he inherited his title and control of the historic Grosvenor Estate aged 25, following the death of his father from a heart attack in 2016. His property company, Grosvenor Group, owns hundreds of acres of land in Mayfair and Belgravia, as well as major city centre developments such as Liverpool's One shopping centre. In 2020, the duke donated £12.5 million to the UK's Covid-19 relief effort including funds for NHS Charities Together and for medical research and development.
Daily Mail
5 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Katie Price's boyfriend JJ Slater urges bankrupt star to 'sort her finances' as he issues 'ultimatum' after split rumours
Katie Price 's boyfriend JJ Slater has reportedly given their relationship 'ultimatum' to force the former glamour model to 'sort her finances' after split rumours. The former glamour model has been involved in a stop-start relationship with Slater since publicly confirming they were romantically involved last February. But she prompted inevitable speculation regarding her current relationship status after reshuffling her social media platform to prioritise pictures that focus on her children and passion for horse-riding. Katie, 46, also drew attention to her easter pantomime role in Pinocchio - in which she plays a fairy - as well as promotional photos and videos for CBD oil and niche, online fashion retailers. And now friends close to the couple have told The Mirror JJ has given the personality an ultimatum and has to 'start taking accountability for her finances'. A source said the publication: 'JJ has had enough of all the drama' 'Katie isn't responsible with money and has been struggling with the moving situation, which JJ feels she sometimes takes out on him. 'He has given Katie an ultimatum, explaining that she needs to start taking accountability for her finances and get her ducks in a row – if they're to have a real chance together.' Katie is notably absent from his Instagram platform, with the first visible photo of the model seemingly shared last November. Despite a clear shift in tone across social media, sources have denied claims of another rift in their relationship. A source told MailOnline: 'It's not true.' The couple began dating in early 2024 and even sparked speculation of an engagement after Katie was pictured wearing a diamond while recovering from her sixth facelift in Turkey last year. Price recently admitted she wouldn't date someone who has 'only slept with two or three' women as she likes to know a man has 'been around the block'. The model has had a number of high-profile romances over the years - including a marriage to Peter Andre, a relationship with footballer Dwight Yorke and a cheeky kiss with Simon Cowell. And now friends close to the couple have told The Mirror JJ has given the personality an ultimatum and has to 'start taking accountability for her finances' Katie has reshuffled her social media platform to prioritise pictures that focus on her children and passion for horse-riding Likewise, Katie is notably absent from his Instagram platform, despite the London based designer previously peppering his grid with photos of the ex-glamour model And in a recent interview on the Disruptors Podcast, Price laid bare exactly what she likes in a man. 'I like to know they've been around the block,' she remarked. 'I'd rather a man know what they're doing. If someone hadn't had many, I wouldn't really like that - isn't that weird! 'I'll ask them: "Do you know how many you've slept with and that?" Price was also asked what the 'minimum number' of girls she would like a potential boyfriend to have slept with is. She said: 'When I was younger, I'd be jealous but I think because I'm at my age, I just think if a man's been there, done it, knows what they want - they're more settled in their head aren't they. 'Imagine if it's like two or three girls [a man's body count], they don't even know what they're doing. 'My friends say "Katie, you're gross, that's disgusting, why would you want a man that's been everywhere" and I'm just like, I'd rather it.
The Guardian
6 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Diana McVeagh obituary
The writer Diana McVeagh, who has died aged 98, carved a niche for herself as a particular authority on the composers Edward Elgar and Gerald Finzi. Indeed she may aptly be described as the doyenne of Elgar studies, which previously had been a largely male preserve. While still in her 20s she was invited by the scholar Eric Blom, as an adviser to the publishers Dent, to write a book about Elgar. The result, published as Edward Elgar: His Life and Music (1955), preceded three other major postwar biographies (by Jerrold Northrop Moore, Michael Kennedy and Robert Anderson), though Diana outlived those writers. Replete with insight and characterised by the bold, sometimes controversial, judgments that she became known for in later years, it was a remarkable achievement. Revisiting the subject in Elgar the Music Maker (2007) half a century later, she did not hesitate to revise some of those judgments in the light of experience. In the 1950s, for example, she had not been able to hear the pre-Gerontius cantatas, of which she was quite dismissive, in performance. In the later book, with the benefit of subsequent commercial recordings, she made amends by discussing those works, not least Caractacus and The Light of Life, at some length and with greater admiration. It was the high opinion of the 1955 Elgar book held by Finzi that persuaded the latter's family, on his death the following year, to approach Diana to undertake his life and works. 'We were charmed by her bright personality,' wrote Finzi's widow, Joy, 'a great character for one so apparently demure and young.' It was a work long in gestation, not least because the trove of unpublished correspondence and other previously unseen material released by the family needed to be absorbed (though a good deal of this had already been incorporated in Stephen Banfield's fine appraisal of 1997). Diana's biography finally appeared in 2005, and her monumental edition of the letters, 1,052 pages in length, scrupulously annotated, followed in 2021. Diana was born in Ipoh, the capital of the state of Perak in the then British colony of Malaya, where her father, John McVeagh, was the manager of a rubber plantation. Her mother, Margaret, had studied singing with Harry Plunket Greene at the Royal College of Music, London. The family returned to her mother's homeland in the Welsh valleys when Diana was five years old, but at the age of 10 she was sent to Malvern girls' college, where she remained for eight years before going to the Royal College of Music in 1944. Her intention had been to study the piano with Kathleen Long, but arriving with one hand broken in a recent riding accident, she took instead weekly lessons with Frank Howes, music critic of the Times. This in turn led to her filing a review of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius for the paper in 1948, the first of many she contributed over the following two decades. From 1964 to 1967 she acted as assistant editor to Andrew Porter on the Musical Times. She subsequently joined the editorial board of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, with particular responsibility for performers, and contributing the articles on Elgar and Finzi. In addition to Musical Times, she contributed many articles to such periodicals as The Listener and Records and Recordings. Despite her somewhat feline protective aura, Diana was a warm-hearted, encouraging colleague, not least to those of us fortunate to work with her at New Grove. For three years she suffered from the debilitating disease myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME or chronic fatigue syndrome) before relinquishing her editorial responsibilities to spend more time with her husband, Bill (CW) Morley, a pathologist, in his advancing years. Among the bold judgments of Elgar in her youthful study is the observation that he 'was never to surpass the poetic delicacy of Stanford or the unselfconscious nobility of Parry at their best, and they could never have written anything as meretricious as Elgar at his worst'. Her chapter on Elgar's character is a minor masterpiece of insight into the polarities by which his nature was marked: caustic, tactless, boisterous on the one hand, generous, warm-hearted and sensitive on the other. Attributing that sensitivity in part to Elgar's inferiority complex, which made him 'alive to the problems of others', she is frank too about his lapses into small-mindedness and bigotry – the result, perhaps, of his lack of a formal education. She also wrote sentiently about the traumatic impact of the death in 1920 of Elgar's wife on his creative impulses and zest for life. Surprisingly dismissive about late works such as the Piano Quintet and Violin Sonata, she made amends in Elgar the Music Maker by acknowledging the ghostly, evocative passages of the former, and the poetic and reflective material of the latter, which raise these works to a superior level. The Finzi biography, like both the Elgar books, was distinguished by the wit and elegance of its prose style, as well as the author's ear for nuance in the music. As she aptly pointed out, to experience Finzi's celebrated choral work Intimations of Immortality as merely euphonious and benign is to miss the desolation at its heart. She married Morley in 1950; he died in 1994. Diana Mary McVeagh, writer, born 6 September 1926; died 2 July 2025
