Breaking Baz: Ruth Wilson On “Huge Act Of Stamina” Needed To Perform For 24 Hours With 100 Men On London Stage; Mud, Glorious Mud For ‘All Quiet On The Western Front’

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Ruth Wilson, star of The Affair, Luther and His Dark Materials, has performed with many leading actors, usually one at a time, but in May her endurance will be put to the test when she embarks on a marathon stage show in London playing the same scene almost nonstop for 24 hours with one hundred different men — one after the other. “Yes, a hundred is enough,” she laughs. “It’s a huge act of stamina,” she tells me of The Second Woman, a title inspired by a play that’s at the center of John Cassavetes’s 1977 movie Opening Night starring Gena Rowlands. ”I dunno how I’m going to get through it and that’s part of the appeal to me,” she adds.

For a split second her face looks stricken as she tells me “I will lose any sense of performance as the show goes on,” she sighs, though it’s clear she relishes the prospect.

The show runs at the Young Vic Theater, May 19-20 for a period of 24 hours, 4PM to 4PM. It’s a gargantuan undertaking for Wilson but not one that she can fully prepare for because her legion of co-stars will be strangers to her. ”I don’t have any rehearsals with the men, I don’t meet them before,” she explains.

They get given a scene to learn and Wilson learns the same scene. ”Then they’ll come on and it’s the first time I would have met them.” I inquire as to whether they’ll be washed.