Alison Steadman, Felicity Kendal and Tim Pigott-Smith will lead productions at the Theatre Royal in Bath this summer.
Under director Danny Moar, the theatre has managed to attract pedigree stage stars in recent years, with West End transfers of its productions becoming a regular occurrence. Last week the theatre announced that its revival of Noël Coward's Relative Values will arrive at the Harold Pinter theatre in March, following transfers including August Wilson's Fences, Alan Ayckbourn's Relatively Speaking and The Madness of King George by Alan Bennett. Several productions from its Ustinov studio theatre have also travelled to London in the last couple of years.
Steadman will return to the spa town to play Madame Raquin in a new adaptation of Emile Zola's naturalist novel Thérèse Raquin by Helen Edmundson from July, with Jonathan Munby directing.
Kendal, meanwhile, will return to Bath in Hay Fever, having previously appeared there in two other Coward plays, Fallen Angels and The Vortex. In Lindsay Posner's new production, due to open in August, she will take the role of Judith Bliss, the faded stage star at the helm of a bona fide bohemian family.
The season starts with Adrian Noble, formerly artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, tackling Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, a play famous for its sozzled squabbles. Tim Pigott-Smith and Clare Higgins will play the warring married couple George and Martha Washington from June onwards. The production will be followed by David Grindley's revival of Alan Bennett's Kafka's Dick, casting for which has not yet been announced.
