Ria Zmitrowicz stars in The Glow at the Royal Court this month
(Picture: Matt Writtle)Don’t fret that for the early part of Alistair McDowall’s feverishly anticipated new play, The Glow, Ria Zmitrowicz doesn’t say a word. If you’ve seen her on stage, you’ll know she’s the MVP of any drama, a hand grenade ready to be sent fizzing into the heart of the action. From Lucy Kirkwood’s The Welkin at the National Theatre to The Doctor and Dance Nation at the Almeida, her characters often have an external wildness or innocence, but tend to be carrying the flame of something far knottier inside.
For a while now, Zmitrowicz, 31, has felt a bit like one of theatre’s best kept secrets – see her in one thing and you’ll want to see her in everything. Over the past decade, she’s been building a respected career on stage and screen, and was named a Bafta Breakthrough Brit in 2018. But this could be the year her talent goes global - as well as playing the lead in McDowall’s play at the Royal Court, she’ll star alongside Leslie Mann, Tim Robbins and Little Simz in Amazon Prime’s star-studded adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s Woman’s Prize-winning novel The Power. (Eddie Marsan plays her dad.)
