Andrew Scott returns to Sea Wall for New York run turned into film

Andrew Scott will reprise his starring role in Sea Wall, the one-man play written for him by Simon Stephens, for 19 performances in New York that will also become a film, according to Variety.

The limited run plays Studio Seaview from Oct. 16 to Oct. 30. Every show will be part of the shoot.

Sea Wall is a 30-minute monologue, meaning a single actor speaks directly to the audience for the whole story. Scott plays Alex, a photographer whose life with his wife and young daughter is suddenly upended. The story turns on a devastating incident during a family holiday in the South of France, according to Deadline.

Tina Satter, a Peabody Award winner, directs both the stage revival and the screen version. The camera will follow the production backstage, on stage and in the house, with the audience at each show treated as a character, according to Variety. It is not a straight recording. The feature is re-conceived as a film about the creation of theatre, according to Deadline.

The play began in 2008, when London's Bush Theatre commissioned Stephens to write something that could be performed in natural daylight after a flood damaged its lighting. Scott gave the first performance there that year. A 30-minute short-film version directed by Stephens and Andrew Porter followed in 2012, and Scott returned to the role at London's Old Vic in 2018.

American audiences have seen a different actor in the part. Tom Sturridge played the sole role when Sea Wall was staged on Broadway in 2019, according to Deadline. That production started Off Broadway at the Public Theater in a double bill with Nick Payne's A Life, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, before both plays moved to Broadway's Hudson Theatre.

On stage in New York, the producers are Seaview, Spencer Ross, Steven Demmler, Linden Entertainment and Pam Hurst-Della Pietra and Stephen Della Pietra, with Wessex Grove and ATG Productions as executive producers. The team includes lighting design by Isabella Byrd and sound design by Ben Williams, with Paul Yee as director of photography for the film and Parker Lutz advising on production design.

What makes this stand out is the scale. Thirty minutes. One actor. Nineteen rooms full of people who become part of the film. For anyone who wants the live version, the window is short before it lives on screen.