R15 - Took the words right out of my mouth - especially in the photo of her with the Dreaded Fedora in one hand and him in the baseball cap.
Actually, I'd say Meghan Markle is the poor man's Zawe Ashton - who at least seems to be a genuine theatre creature with talent.
Whether Hiddleton is a poor woman's Prince Harry or not is a different kettle of fish.
It all looks like PR to me, for both of them (again).
For what it's worth, I saw this last night in New York. Workmanlike, competent, and lacking, as every stage production of this I've ever seen has (I've seen three) the punch in the gut that the iconic film with Ben Kingsley, Jeremy Irons, and Patricia Hodge delivered. As for sexual chemistry: it was non-existent between Cox and Ashton, Hiddleston and Ashton, and Hiddleston and Cox.
Charlie Cox was forgettable (sorry to his fans here, but he was), Ashton showed well but I wouldn't say she was loaded with charisma and she has a peculiarly masculine, smoky voice, and Hiddleston was wry, intelligent, mocking and clearly the actor with the most charisma of the three, but he also failed to deliver the dark bitter edge that Kingsley did in the film. In the end, you never quite figure out whether Emma just fell into temptation in a bored moment, or whether she hated her husband already when Jerry seduces her - the only clue you get is Robert admitting he slapped her around a couple of times, but that's much later on. That's on the playwright, of course, not the actors.
I don't think this play is meaty enough for this kind of pared down production. I think it worked better as a film.
The house was packed, by the way, from bottom to top (I was first row mezzanine, my preferred spot in these small theaters, I don't know why people want to sit in Row A up front and look up the actors' nostrils). It's obviously a hit, and there were big crowds by the stage door exit waiting for Hiddleston (anyone who thinks the twittering was for Cox and/or Ashton is in denial), but still the success is nice for all three actors, and for Hiddleston especially, in London and now New York, after the HiddleSwift debacle.
He's not stupid - he did the right thing: shut up about it, put it behind him, went underground, and emerged in Serious Actor mode after the obligatory turn in the last of the Marvel Big Hit Avengers film.
I wonder if he'll go on doing the sensible thing now given the state of his hairline and stop trying to be a Major Leading Man and do more stage work, return to Shakespeare as he did with the well-received Hamlet fundraiser for RADA, and take decent film roles with interesting characters.
