Felicity Kendal at The Lowry
TV faces star in…
Mrs Warren’s Profession
The Lowry, Mon 2 – Sat 7 November 2009
Press night: Mon 2 November, 7.30pm
Felicity Kendal faces the ultimate test of a mother-daughter relationship as she takes the title role in Bernard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession at The Lowry, prior to a West End run.
The cast for this provocative comedy, directed by award-winning Michael Rudman, also includes David Yelland, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Max Bennett, Eric Carle and Mark Tandy.
Mrs Warren’s daughter, Vivie, has never really known much about her mother. A prim young woman, she has enjoyed a comfortable upbringing, a Cambridge education, a generous monthly allowance and now has ambitions to go into Law. Is it conceivable that all this privilege and respectability has been financed from the proceeds of the oldest profession? How will Vivie react when she finds out the awful truth about her mother’s ill-gotten gains?
Written in 1894 but banned from performance until the racy 1920s, Mrs Warren’s Profession lays bare the rampant hypocrisy of Victorian society and its constrained morals.
Felicity Kendal is much loved for her illustrious television and stage career. She has starred in many long-running television series including The Good Life; Solo; The Mistress and Rosemary and Thyme. Her extensive theatre credits range from Humble Boy, Peter Shaffer's Amadeus and Desdemona in Othello, to Tom Stoppard’s On The Razzle and Arcadia. She won the Variety Club Best Actress of the Year Award for Clouds directed by Michael Rudman. She starred with Alan Bates in Much Ado About Nothing and Ivanov, for which she won the Evening Standard Best Actress Award. Other theatre credits include Happy Days (2003), Amy’s View (2006) and The Vortex (2008). She was most recently seen in Simon Gray’s The Last Cigarette directed by Richard Eyre.
David Yelland plays the role of Sir George Crofts. His numerous diverse roles for film and television include Edward VIII in Chariots of Fire, Nick Rumpole in Rumpole of the Bailey, Edwin in The Bretts, and the title role in David Copperfield. Most recently, he has appeared on our screens in Waking the Dead, The Line of Beauty, Midsomer Murders, Spooks, the US hit series Bones and Agatha Christie: Poirot. On stage, he has worked extensively with the National Theatre, the Chichester Festival Theatre, The Peter Hall Company and in the West End. His work with The Peter Hall Company includes An Ideal Husband in the West End and on Broadway; King Lear at the Old Vic; Cuckoos at the Ustinov Theatre, The Gate and the Barbican; and As You Like It at the Theatre Royal Bath and on tour in America. He was last seen on stage at the Theatre Royal in 2007 as Ralph Nickleby in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby prior to the West End.
Posted on Monday, 12 October 2009 under Press Theatre Press