Atkins Planning For Redgrave's Hopeful Return To The Stage

The Daily Mail's Baz Bamigboye reports that Vanessa Redgrave is hopefully being slowly nudged back to the stage by her old friend Eileen Atkins in what has been called 'part of the healing process' following the loss of her daughter, Natasha Richardson.

Atkins has been adapting Helen Garner's novella The Spare Room for the West End stage and has asked Redgrave to be in it with her either late this autumn or early in 2010 reports the Mail.

The story is, as one reviewer put it, about the burdens of illness, death, tough love and friendship. Oscar winner Redgrave, recently in the media eye after the tragic death of her older daughter, had a small role in the 2007 drama "Atonement." To read the full report in Bamigboye's column click here.

She appears on the series "Nip/Tuck" as the mother of the character played by her daughter Joely Richardson.

The acting legend has been careful about what she has done since Natasha's death in March following a skiing accident. She passed on a role in Robin Hood as Eleanor of Aquitaine opposite Russell Crowe. It went to Atkins instead.

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