Bill Kenwright presents a Theatr Clwyd / National Theatre production of Laura Wade’s Home, I’m Darling, winner of the 2019 Olivier Award for Best New Comedy and directed by Tamara Harvey and Hannah Noone. This new production of Home, I’m Darling will arrive at The Alexandra Birmingham from 25 to 29 April 2023.
Leading the cast are BAFTA award winner Jessica Ransom (Doc Martin, Armstrong and Miller, Horrible Histories) as Judy, Diane Keen (Doctors, The Cuckoo Waltz) as Sylvia and Neil McDermott (Eastenders, The Royal) as Johnny, with further casting to be announced. This sparkling, thought-provoking comedy by Laura Wade (Posh/The Riot Club) is about one woman’s quest to be the perfect 1950s housewife.
How happily married are the happily married?
Every couple needs a little fantasy to keep their marriage sparkling. But behind the gingham curtains, things start to unravel, and being a domestic goddess is not as easy as it seems…
Home, I’m Darling received its World Premiere at Theatr Clwyd in 2018, before playing at the National Theatre and then transferring to the Duke of York’s Theatre in the West End, winning the 2019 Olivier Award for Best New Comedy. This production reunites the entire original creative team, led by Theatr Clwyd Artistic Director and Co-Director Designate of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Tamara Harvey. It is co-directed by Hannah Noone, with design by Olivier award-winner Anna Fleischle, lighting by Lucy Carter, sound design by Tom Gibbons and choreography by Charlotte Broom.
NOTES TO EDITORS
Jessica Ransom (Judy) is most recognised for her role as Morwenna Newcross in ITV’S Doc Martin. Her TV credits are extensive and include series regular roles as Jess in Zapped, and Polly in Our Zoo. She has also appeared as various historical characters in the BBC TV series Horrible Histories, for which she won a Children’s BAFTA, and is a writer for Series 9 and Series 10. Guest leads include Defending the Guilty, The Escape Artist, The Armstrong & Miller Show, A Saucerful of Secrets, C-Bomb, 30 & Counting and The Outsiders.
On stage, her credits include Laura Wade’s Posh at the Royal Court and Duke of York’s Theatre, Straight at the Crucible Theatre Sheffield and her own show Jessica Ransom: Unsung Heroes which she performed at both Leicester Square Theatre and the Edinburgh Fringe. Jessica has also worked extensively for BBC Radio 4 and appeared as Drusilla in Horrible Histories the movie. She can next be seen in the feature film The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, which is due to be released on Netflix this year and can be seen on the final series of Doc Martin for ITV. She is currently filming the next series of Horrible Histories.
Diane Keen (Sylvia)’s stage credits include: The Unexpected Guest (The Mill at Sonning); Beautiful – The Carole King Musical (West End); Same Time Next Year (New Vic, Newcastle); Ladybird (Bath Theatre Royal); The Vagina Monologues (New Wimbledon Theatre); The Small Hand (UK Tour) and You’re Never Too Old (UK Tour).
Her screen credits include: Doctors (BBC); Rings on Their Fingers (BBC); You Must Be The Husband (BBC); Foxy Lady (ITV); Brighton Belles (ITV); The Cuckoo Waltz (ITV); New Tricks (BBC); A Touch of Frost (ITV); The Ruth Rendell Mysteries (ITV); Shillingbury Tales (ITV); September Song (Granada Television); Minder (ITV); Boon (ITV); Taggart (ITV); The Professionals (ITV); The Wedding Ring (TV Film); Nowhere in Africa (Constantin Film – Oscar Winning); Thirteen at Dinner (Warner Bros); Jekyll and Hyde (TV Film); Silver Dream Racer (Rank); The Sweeney (Thames Television – Most Promising Newcomer Award) and Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (Giant Production).
Neil McDermott (Johnny)’s stage credits include: Glory Ride (The Other Palace); Pretty Woman (The Savoy Theatre); Club Tropicana (No. 1 UK Tour); EUGENIUS! (The Other Palace); The Sound of Music (No1 UK Tour); The Wind in The Willows (London Palladium & Theatre Royal Plymouth); The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Ambassadors’ Theatre); Oliver! (Grange Park Opera); Only The Brave (Soho Theatre/Wales Millennium Centre); Pride and Prejudice (Lyric Theatre, Belfast); Shrek The Musical (West End); La Cage Aux Folles (Menier Chocolate Factory); Follies (London Palladium); Henry IV (Donmar Warehouse); The Sound Of Music (London Palladium); Bad Girls The Musical (West Yorkshire Playhouse); Aladdin (The Old Vic); The Gondoliers and The Waterbabies (Chichester Festival Theatre); Babes In Arms (New Theatre, Cardiff) and Through The Woods (Birmingham Rep).
His screen credits include: playing series regular Ryan Malloy in Eastenders (BBC); Doctor Who (BBC); George Gently (BBC); series regular Dr Ralph Ellis in The Royal (ITV); Kiss of Death (BBC); Chopratown (BBC) and Rosemary and Thyme (ITV).
Neil has also appeared in episodes of Casualty and Doctors (BBC); Blooded (Magma Pictures); The Hitch (Short Film) and Goal! (Touchstone Pictures).
Laura Wade (Writer)’s play Home, I’m Darling won the 2019 Olivier award for Best New Comedy. In 2018 she adapted Jane Austen’s unfinished novel The Watsons for Chichester Festival Theatre,and in 2015 she adapted Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet for the stage. The play premiered at the Lyric Hammersmith before transferring to the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh.
Laura’s screenplay The Riot Club, an adaptation of her 2010 stage play Posh, premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2014. It opened in cinemas in September 2014. The film is directed by Lone Scherfig and stars Max Irons, Sam Claflin and Douglas Booth. Posh opened in the West End at the Duke of York’s Theatre on 11 May 2012, after the original production opened at the Royal Court Theatre in April 2010 to sell out audiences.
In November 2010 her play for voices, Kreutzer vs Kreutzer, was performed as part of a concert by the Australian Chamber Orchestra featuring music by Beethoven and Janacek, on a national tour of Australia, including the Sydney Opera House. Laura’s play Alice, a new adaptation of Alice in Wonderland for Sheffield Theatres opened in June 2010. Her play Other Hands premiered at Soho Theatre in February 2006 to enormous acclaim. Laura’s play Colder Than Here premiered at Soho Theatre in February 2005 followed shortly afterwards by her Royal Court Theatre debut Breathing Corpses – both of which won rave reviews. Laura was subsequently joint winner of the prestigious George Devine Award 2005.
In 2006 Laura won the Pearson Most Promising Playwright Award and was nominated for an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre for Colder Than Here and Breathing Corpses.
Tamara Harvey (Director) is currently the Artistic Director of Theatr Clwyd and the Co-Artistic Director Designate of the Royal Shakespeare Company. She has directed in the West End, throughout the UK and abroad, working on classic plays, new writing, musical theatre and in film. Her production of Home, I’m Darling in co-production with the National Theatre transferred to the West End and was nominated for five Olivier Awards in 2019, winning Best New Comedy. At Theatr Clwyd she has also directed the premieres of Isla by Tim Price (and the subsequent film version for the BBC), Emily White’s Pavilion, Pilgrims by Elinor Cook and Peter Gill’s version of Uncle Vanya (co-produced with Sheffield Theatres), for which she won the Wales Theatre Award for Best Director. In 2020 and 2021 she directed screen versions of What a Carve Up! and The Picture of Dorian Gray adapted by Henry Filloux-Bennett. Most recently she directed The Famous Five, a new musical in co-production with Chichester Festival Theatre.
Hannah Noone (Co-Director) is a freelance theatre and opera director from North Wales and interim course leader of the MA Opera Directors at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. She was Resident Director on Home, I’m Darling (Theatr Clwyd/National Theatre/West End), Staff Director at the National Theatre for both Home, I’m Darling and Mr Gum & The Dancing Bear, and Assistant Director for Wolf Witch Giant Fairy & A New Dark Age at the Royal Opera House. Her directing credits include Offie-nominated Elixir of Love (King’s Head Theatre), The In-Between (National Youth Theatre of Wales/Theatr Clwyd), Nightmare Scenario (Opera Sonic), Worlds Apart in War (Theatr Clwyd/National Trust), A Soldier’s Tale (Edinburgh Incidental Orchestra) and Boho (Theatr Clwyd/Hijinx).
Associate credits include: Double Drop (Dirty Protest/Edinburgh Fringe) and Uncle Vanya (Sheffield Theatres/Theatr Clwyd). Hannah will be directing Storyhouse’s The Snow Queen this December.
Anna Fleischle (Designer) is an Olivier award–winning and Tony-nominated production set and costume designer. Theatre credits includes: Death Of A Salesman (Broadway 2022/Young Vic/West End); John Gabriel Borkman (The Bridge); Much Ado about Nothing (National Theatre); Hangmen (Broadway/Royal Court/West End, Tony Award Nominee 2022, 2016 Olivier Award Winner For Best Set Design, Critics’ Circle Award ‘Best Designer’, Evening Standard Award ‘Best Design’); The Collaboration (Young Vic, Broadway); 2:22 A Ghost Story (West End, Ahmanson Theatre LA); House of Shades, The Writer, Before the Party (Almeida); Hamlet (Young Vic); The Forest (Hampstead Theatre); Don Juan In Soho; The End Of Longing (West End); Once Upon A One More Time (Nederlander); A Kind Of People; Liberian Girl (Royal Court) The Kid Stays In The Picture (Royal Court & Complicité); Two Ladies; A German Life; A Very Very Very Dark Matter (Bridge Theatre); Home, I’m Darling (Theatr Clwyd/National Theatre/West End, 2019 Olivier Award Nominee For Best Set Design and Best Costume Design); The Way Of The World (Donmar Warehouse); Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield/West End/UK tour/Los Angeles, USA/Korea); Much Ado About Nothing; Troilus and Cressida (Shakespeare’s Globe); Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (Old Vic); Beware Of Pity (Schaubühne, Berlin/Complicité); The Two Noble Kinsmen; Cymbeline; Love’s Sacrifice (RSC); West Side Story, Blindsided, Saturday Night & Sunday Morning, Rats Tails (Manchester Royal Exchange) You Can See The Hills; Love and Money (Manchester Royal Exchange/Young Vic).
Her opera credits include: L’Orfeo (Vienna Staatsoper); Weimar Nightfall: Seven Deadly Sins (LA Philharmonic), Dance credits include: Message in a Bottle (Sadler’s Wells) and John; Can We Talk About This? (DV8 Physical Theatre/National Theatre/International tour).
Lucy Carter (Lighting Designer) is a multi–award winning, critically acclaimed lighting designer. She was awarded the 2018 Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for Outstanding Contribution to Dance. She is a two–time winner of the prestigious Knight of Illumination Award for Dance for Chroma (2008) and for Woolf Works (2015), winner of the 2013 TMA Achievement award in Opera for Lohengrin and the 2004 Olivier Dance Award for 2 Human.
Her theatre credits include: The Time Traveller’s Wife: A New Musical (Chester Storyhouse); 2:22 A Ghost Story (Criterion Theatre, Gielgud Theatre, Noël Coward Theatre); Much Ado about Nothing, Medea, Emil and the Detectives, Blurred Lines and Husband and Sons (National Theatre); Force Majeure (Donmar Warehouse); Persuasion (Rose Theatre); Wicked (Hamburg); Escaped Alone, Coriolanus (Crucible Theatre); Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (West End & UK Tour); On the Town (Hyogo Performing Arts, Japan); Home, I’m Darling (National Theatre and West End); The Almighty Sometimes (The Royal Exchange); Oil (Almeida) and The End of Longing (Playhouse Theatre).
Her opera credits include: Le nozze di Figaro (Opéra National de Paris); Mavra/Pierrot Lunaire, Hansel and Gretel (Royal Opera House); The Cunning Little Vixen, Orphée, Salomé, The Dream of Gerontius (ENO); Katya Kabanova (Royal Opera House – Best New Opera Production, Olivier Awards 2019); Werther (Bergen National Opera); Elektra (Göteborg Opera); Lohengrin (Greek National Opera, Polish National Opera, Welsh National Opera); La Finta Giardiniera (Glyndebourne, Teatro alla Scala) and Peter Grimes (Aldeburgh on the Beach).
Her dance credits include: The Dante Project, McGregor and Mugler, Woolf Works, Obsidian Tear, Afterite, Yugen, Multiverse, Chroma and Autobiography with long–term collaborator Wayne McGregor, Threshold (Le Patin Libre) and The Most Incredible Thing (Sadlers Wells and Charlotte Ballet).
Her other credits include: lighting design for Gareth Pugh’s Women’s Collection in London Fashion Week 2017 and 2019, and Paloma Faith’s performance at the Brit Awards 2015.
Tom Gibbons (Sound Designer). Tom’s recent theatre credits include: Best of Enemies (Noël Coward Theatre, Young Vic); Hamlet, Oresteia (Park Avenue Armory, Almeida Theatre, West End); Animal Farm (UK tour); West Side Story, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Broadway);
Cabaret (Göteborg Opera); Judas, Oedipus, The Doctor (International Theatre Amsterdam);
The Antipodes, Home, I’m Darling (Theatr Clwyd, National Theatre, West End), People, Places and Things (Winner for Best Sound Design, Olivier Awards 2016), Hedda Gabler, Sunset At The Villa Thalia, The Red Barn (National Theatre/West End); All About Eve (West End); Our Town (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre); The Doctor, Wild Duck (Almeida/West End); Madness of King George III (Nottingham Playhouse); Hexenjagd (Theater Basel); Mr Burns, 1984 (Almeida/West End/Broadway); Fanny and Alexander, The Lorax (Old Vic); A View From the Bridge (Young Vic/West End/ Broadway); Obsession (International Theatre Amsterdam, Barbican); Life of Galileo, Happy Days, A Season in the Congo, Disco Pigs (Young Vic); Les Misérables (Wermland Opera, Sweden); The Crucible (Theater Basel, Broadway); Anna Karenina (Manchester Royal Exchange); The Moderate Soprano, Elephants (Hampstead Theatre); White Devil, As You Like It (RSC); Translations, Plenty (Sheffield Crucible); After Life, The Absence of War, Romeo & Juliet (Headlong); Lion Boy (Complicité); Venus in Fur (Theatre Royal Haymarket); Henry IV, Julius Caesar (Donmar, St Ann’s Brooklyn); The End of History, Pah La, The Woods, Love Love Love and Goats (Royal Court).
Charlotte Broom (Choreographer) is co-founder of HeadSpaceDance (Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for Best Independent Company, 2017) and was principal dancer at Northern Ballet and Cullberg Ballet in Sweden.
Her theatre credits include: Comedy of Errors, Love’s Sacrifice (RSC); Oedipus (Tokyo Bunkamura); Sweeney Todd, The Sum (Liverpool Everyman/ Liverpool Playhouse); Juno and the Paycock (Liverpool Everyman/ Bristol Old Vic); Home, I’m Darling (National Theatre/ West End); A Very Very Very Dark Matter (Bridge Theatre), Much Ado About Nothing, Secret Theatre, The Lightning Child (Shakespeare’s Globe); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Regent’s Park); The Country Wife (Chichester Festival Theatre) and Nell Gwynn (ETT/ Shakespeare’s Globe/UK tour/ West End).
Her TV credits include: Humans (Channel 4)and So You Think You Can Dance (BBC) (assistant choreographer).