Academy and Olivier Award winner Helen Mirren says that she will reprise her performance as Queen Elizabeth II in a Broadway run of Peter Morgan’s The Audience, which played a celebrated, sold-out London run last year, according to the Daily Mail. Mirren stated that rehearsals will get underway in mid-January 2015 with previews to begin in February. A March opening is expected. An official announcement of a Broadway production has not been made. It was previously reported that playwright Morgan was expected to update portions of the script for American audiences. Mirren added that former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair may be among the new characters to appear when The Audience arrives on Broadway. The Audience was previously broadcast in cinemas as part of NT Live.

In The Audience, playwright Morgan imagines a series of pivotal meetings between Her Majesty the Queen and various prime ministers in their weekly meetings, which have hitherto been entirely secret. Stephen Daldry directed the production. Mirren reprised the role of Queen Elizabeth II (for which she won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Actress for “The Queen,” also scripted by Morgan). Her performance in The Audience garnered her the Olivier Award. According to press materials for the London run, “The Audience breaks this contract of silence. From Churchill to Cameron, each Prime Minister has used these private conversations as a sounding board and a confessional – sometimes intimate, sometimes explosive. In turn, the Queen can’t help but reveal her own self as she advises, consoles and, on occasion, teases.”

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