Sir Derek Jacobi returns to London stage

BBC News reports that out actor Sir Derek Jacobi will make his first appearance on the London stage in five years in a controversial new play about the Vatican’s secret archive. God Only Knows opens at the West End’s Vaudeville Theatre on March 20, following an eight-week sellout provincial tour last year. The show will reunite Jacobi with playwright Hugh Whitemore, whose 1986 Breaking the Code starred Jacobi as real-life gay cryptographer Alan Turing. God Only Knows is set in Tuscany, where four friends on holiday find their peaceful evening shattered by a mysterious stranger who claims to be in possession of dangerous secrets from the Vatican’s secret archive. Jacobi last appeared in the West End in 1996 in the title role of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, a role he reprised last year on Broadway opposite Laura Linney, who received a Best Actress Oscar nomination this week for You Can Count on Me.