Bakersfield Mist, Duchess Theatre

Formidable Hollywood star Kathleen Turner is taking over the West End for a limited run this summer in a brand new play by Stephen Sachs. 

The Play...

Bakersfield Mist was inspired by the true story of a painting bought for a few dollars in a thrift shop as a gift. The recipient found it so ugly that they put it into a jumble sale, whereupon an art expert declared that it was an original Jackson Pollock. 

Turner plays Maude, a woman convinced of her painting’s authenticity and Scottish actor Ian McDiarmid as a far more sceptical expert, who has flown in to Maude’s trailerpark home in Bakersfield, California. Foul-mouthed and down on her luck, Maude Gutman is more than a match for Mr Lionel Percy. This two-hander makes for a hilarious and scorching debate on what makes great art, what defines class and what we truly value in life. 

The People...

Turner is known for glorious, witty performances in films such as Romancing the Stone, The Jewel in the Nile and Body Heat but she is also a compelling stage actress. She played Mrs Robinson in the stage adaptation of The Graduate in 2000 and her turn as Martha in the Broadway transfer of Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf? was called “unbearably poignant” by The Guardian . She has only just finished a run in the title role of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage in her native US. 

Ian McDiarmid, likewise, made his name in the Star Wars movie franchise but has since carved a stunning career in theatre. He won a Tony Award for Best Actor Featured in a Play, starring in Brian Friel’s The Faith Healer alongside Ralph Fiennes. And last year, he returned to the RSC after more than twenty years to play Galileo in The Life of Galileo. 

American playwright Stephen Sachs is also the co-artistic director and founder of the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles, where he first premiered the play. It was sold-out for all of its 114 performances.  Under the guidance of a young, award-winning director Polly Teale, the creative team is a melting pot of generations, talent and culture.