Gemma Arterton's West End play opens tonight

Rising young English film actor Rupert Friend makes his West End debut opposite Olivier Award winner Tamsin Greig in the West End premiere of Douglas Carter Beane's 2006 play The Little Dog Laughed, opening at the Garrick Theatre Jan. 20 (following previews from Jan. 8). The production is booking through April 10 - reports Playbill.

Directed by Jamie Lloyd, the cast also features Gemma Arterton and Harry Lloyd. The play revolves around Mitchell (Friend), a Hollywood film star actor whose sexuality becomes an issue when he falls for a male hustler (Lloyd), who also already has a girlfriend (Arterton). Mitchell is represented by a powerhouse agent called Diane (Grieg).

The play, which was originally produced at Off-Broadway’s Second Stage Theatre in 2006 before transferring to Broadway’s Cort Theatre, won Julie White the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for creating the role of Diane. The London run is produced by Creative Management and Productions.

Friend is best known for his appearances in such films as "The Ligertine," "Pride and Prejudice," "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont," "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" and "Cheri"; offscreen, he also makes headlines for dating Keira Knightley, whom he met during the filming of "Pride and Prejudice," and is currently also appearing in the West End in The Misanthrope, now playing at the Comedy Theatre.

Greig, who was last seen on the London stage in the original West End production of Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage at the Gielgud Theatre in 2008, playing the wife of Ralph Fiennes, is best known for her long-running role in the BBC Radio series "The Archers," in which she plays Debbie Aldridge, and for her comic roles in such series as "Green Wing," winning the Best Comedy Performance in the 2005 Royal Television Society Awards, and "Love Soup." She won the Olivier Award for Best Actress for playing Beatrice in an RSC production of Much Ado About Nothing, which premiered at Stratford-upon-Avon before transferring to the West End's Novello Theatre.

Arterton is best known for her appearance as MI6 agent Strawberry Fields in the James Bond film "Quantum of Solace." Her other screen credits include the title role in the BBC's adaptation of "Tess of the D'Ubervilles" and appearing as Head Girl Kelly in the 2007 "St Trinian's" film. She is the face of Avon's Bond Girl 007 fragrance, which launched in October 2008. Onstage, she has appeared as Rosaline in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost at Shakespeare's Globe in 2007.

Actor Harry Lloyd, whose biography states he is the great, great, great grandson of Charles Dickens, was seen in the West End last year in A View from the Bridge at the Duke of York's Theatre. He has appeared on TV in "David Copperfield," "Goodbye Mr. Chips," "Holby City," "Vital Signs," "The Bill" and as Will Scarlett in "Robin Hood."

Director Jamie Lloyd is associate director of the Donmar Warehouse, where he directed Piaf in 2008 that subsequently transferred to the West End’s Vaudeville Theatre. He also directed the Pinter double bill The Lover and The Collection at the Comedy Theatre in 2008, and Alexi Kaye Campbell’s The Pride at the Royal Court’s Jerwood Theatre Upstairs in November 2008.

To book tickets, contact the box office at 0844 579 1974 or visit www.nimaxtheatres.com.

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