Andrew Scott To Star In Film Version Of Simon Stephens Stage Play ‘Sea Wall’

Andrew Scott will star in a new feature film version of Simon Stephens’ Sea Wall, a play that the actor originally performed in 2008 at the Bush Theatre in London and that was later staged on Broadway in 2019 with Tom Sturridge in the sole role.

The film, though, won’t be a traditional stage-to-screen adaptation: In what producers are calling a one-of-a-kind approach, Sea Wall is essentially being re-conceived as a film about the creation of theater. Scott will perform the solo play at Off Broadway‘s Studio Seaview in October, and the film will include his performances as well as footage from backstage and in the house, “with the audience at each performance serving as an essential character in the feature.”

The film will be captured throughout 19 performances at Studio Seaview from Friday, October 16, to Friday, October 30. Peabody Award winner Tina Satter (Broadway’s Is This A Room?, TV’s Reality) will direct.

Sea Wall, after its U.K. 2008 debut, was presented in the U.S. Off Broadway at the Public Theater in a 2019 double bill with another one-act solo play, Nick Payne’s A Life, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. The two plays then moved to Broadway’s Hudson Theatre.

The new film will actually be the second time Sea Wall with Scott has been recorded: In 2012, a 30-minute short film adaptation of the stage play was directed by the playwright along with producer Andrew Porter. The upcoming version apparently will expand that vision via the backstage and audience aspects.

The play itself is a monologue in which a young British man named Alex recounts a harrowing tale of a devastating incident that occurs when he, his wife and his little daughter are on a beachside vacation in the South of France. The accident leaves the man struggling with grief and a way to move forward.