One of the most high-profile shows at this year’s Fringe is living up to its hype.
Five-star reviews are coming thick and fast for The Trial of Jane Fonda, the world premiere of a play written and directed by seven-time Emmy award winner, Terry Jastrow.
It also features one of the biggest names at the festival, Oscar-nominated actress Anne Archer.
As well as starring alongside Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction, she has acted opposite leading men such as Sylvester Stallone, Matthew McConaughey and Tommy Lee Jones in her long and distinguished career.
Now she is lighting up the stage in the capital as fellow actress Jane Fonda. The play focuses on a little-known event that occurred in Connecticut in June, 1988.
Fonda was confronted by a room full of hostile war veterans intent on boycotting the filming of her new movie, Stanley & Iris, co-starring Robert De Niro.
Many of the controversial issues that had festered for years regarding Fonda’s activism during the Vietnam War surfaced during the course of this meeting.
Jastrow, Archer’s husband, did extensive research when writing the production, including travelling to Hanoi to interview Fonda’s guides and interpreters, retracing her steps and speaking to eyewitnesses.
Fonda herself agreed to be interviewed on several occasions by Jastrow, although it is stressed that she has no creative input in the play, which she hasn’t seen or read.
Anne said: “The play allows both viewpoints, why she went and the truth about what she did and her reasons.
“By the end of the play every night, I feel like I have to fight for my life. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose.”
The Trial of Jane Fonda is at the Music Hall, Assembly Rooms, daily at 4.05pm until August 24.
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