Jon Foster is currently starring in Ellen McDougall production of Idomeneus by Roland Schimmelpfennig which has entered its final week of performances at the Gate Theatre.
Troy has fallen – and the Cretan General Idomeneus is on his way home. But the Gods are angry (aren’t they always?) and so now Idomeneus must make a great sacrifice - but these sacrifices never pan out in the way we’d like them to. Now our General is really in trouble.
No stranger to the Gate, Jon has previously appeared at the theatre in The Trojan Women, Tenet, Dream Story and Mud. His other theatre work includes: A Beginning, A Middle and An End (Greyscale tour), Cheese (Fanshen, Barbican), Invisible (European tour), How To Tell the Monsters From the Misfits (Birmingham Rep) and, for the RSC: Little Eagles, A New Way to Please You, Speaking Like Magpies, Sejanus His Fall and Thomas More.
His television credits include: The Great Fire, Rev, The Smoke, The Town, Southcliffe, Mrs Biggs, Come Rain or Come Shine, Law and Order UK, The IT Crowd and Clone and film credits include: Expectation Management, Nice Guy, Love’s Kitchen and Abroad.
What were your first impressions when you came across Idomeneus?
It blew me away the first time I read it. Idomeneus is a really elusive sort of piece. It’s the kind of thing you read and it affects you. I gave it a quick read in about half an hour, I rattled through it and then sat there thinking for a couple of hours about what it all meant. Then, over the next day or so, I kept coming back to it – it’s one of those scripts which really gets inside your head. It’s an amazing piece of writing!
