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PRESS RELEASE – Friday 23rd November

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A Wales Millennium Centre and Wiltshire Creative Production THE MIRROR CRACK’D by adapted for the stage by Rachel Wagstaff Direction by Set Design by Richard Kent Costume Design by Dinah Collin Lighting Design by Malcolm Rippeth Music & Sound Design by Jon Nicholls Movement by Joseph Alford

• CASTING HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED FOR THE FIRST EVER UK STAGE ADAPTATION OF AGATHA CHRISTIE’S THE MIRROR CRACK’D

• THE WALES MILLENNIUM CENTRE AND WILTSHIRE CREATIVE EUROPEAN PREMIERE PRODUCTION WILL TOUR FROM FEBRUARY 2019, WITH AN OPENING NIGHT AT SALISBURY PLAYHOUSE ON 25 FEBRUARY 2019

• TICKETS ARE NOW ON SALE

Wales Millennium Centre and Wiltshire Creative have today announced casting for the first ever UK stage adaptation of Agatha Christie’s much-loved thriller The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side. Colin R Campbell, Suzanna Hamilton, Julia Hills, Katherine Manners, Katie Matsell, Davina Moon, Huw Parmenter and Gillian Saker will join the previously announced and Simon Shepherd. The Mirror Crack’d will be a European Premiere, opening at Salisbury Playhouse on 15 February before touring to Dublin, Cambridge and Cardiff. The Mirror Crack’d will have an Opening Night on 25 February.

The iconic Marple mystery from the world’s best-selling author of all time has been adapted for the stage by Rachel Wagstaff (Flowers for Mrs Harris, Birdsong) and directed by Melly Still (Coram Boy, My Brilliant Friend, The Lovely Bones).

Times are changing. Girls are wearing trousers and Hollywood has come to a sleepy English village in the shape of a beautiful film star. Miss Marple is left to feel that the world has no need of her now until a mysterious death calls into question the past of all those present. Everyone’s version of events is different. Can Miss Marple unravel the tangle of lies?

Susie Blake (Miss Marple) is known as Hilary Nicholson in Mrs Brown’s Boys, Bev Unwin in and The Continuity Announcer in As Seen on TV. Having worked extensively on stage and screen, her theatre credits include: When We Are Married (Garrick Theatre); Pygmalion (Chichester Festival Theatre); (Apollo Victoria); High Society (UK Tour); Noises Off (National Theatre); The Shakespeare Revue (RSC). Television credits include: Midsomer Murders; You, Me and Them (UKTV Gold); Wild At Heart (ITV); Cuckoo (BBC 3); New Tricks (BBC); Mud (CBBC).

Colin R Campbell’s (Cyril Leigh) theatre credits include: Gilgamesh (The White Bear); Skellig, George’s Marvellous Medicine, Twelfth Night (Birmingham Stage Co.); The Cherry Orchard (Southwark Playhouse); Gluey and The Lion (West Yorkshire Playhouse); Break Away (The Finborough); Having a Ball (Birmingham Rep/Temple Productions tour). Television includes: Unforgotten (ITV); Broken (BBC); Coronation Street (ITV). Film appearances include Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (Warner Bros).

Suzanna Hamilton’s (Marina Gregg) theatre credits include: Interval (Arcola Theatre); Mr Blue Sky, Hell & High Water (Southwark Playhouse); Darkening Fields (National Theatre); My Sister In This House (Hampstead Theatre); Siblings (Hammersmith Lyric); Waiting At the Water’s Edge (Bush Theatre). Television appearances include The Strike: Cuckoo’s Calling (BBC); Silent Witness (BBC); New Tricks (BBC); Jonathan Creek (BBC); McCallum (series regular, STV); Casualty (BBC); Streetwise (series regular); Wish Me Luck (series regular). Film credits include: My Feral Heart; The Island on Bird Street; Out of Africa; 1984; Wildcats of St Trinians; Tess; .

Julia Hills’s (Dolly Bantry) theatre credits include: Worst Wedding Ever (Salisbury Playhouse & Tour); Calendar Girls (Chichester; Tour & West End); The Cherry Orchard (Tobacco Factory Bristol & The Rose Kingston); Beside Herself (Royal Court); Pygmalion (Manchester Royal Exchange); Our Friends In The North (RSC); The Hired Man (Leicester Haymarket & West End); The Mystery of Edwin Drood (); Springs Eternal (The ); Stepping Out (New Vic); The School For Scandal (Tobacco Factory Bristol). Television includes: Eastenders (BBC TV); Doctors (BBC); Casualty (BBC); Law and Order UK (ITV); Dad (BBC); Outnumbered (BBC).

Katherine Manners’s (Heather Leigh) theatre credits include: Table (New Vic Theatre); Before the Party (Salisbury Playhouse); The Hundred We Are (Yard Theatre); Life of Galileo (Birmingham Rep/RSC); From Morning to Midnight, The Revenger’s Tragedy, Coram Boy, The House of Bernarda Alba, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (National Theatre); Rat Tales (Royal Exchange, Manchester); Richard III (The Bridge Project/Old Vic/ BAM/International Tour); Don’t Shoot the Clowns (Fuel); Cinderella (Lyric Hammersmith/Warwick Arts Centre); Snowbound (Trafalgar Studios); The Master Builder (RSC, Academy). Television credits include: The Feed; Press; Bliss; Doctors; War and Peace; Siblings; Holby City; Casualty.

Katie Matsell (Cherry Baker) trained at LAMDA. The Mirror Crack’d will mark Katie’s professional debut.

Davina Moon’s (Ella Zielinksy) theatre credits include: Yellow Face (National Theatre); Privates on Parade (Noël Coward Theatre); Annie Get Your Gun (Young Vic); Miss Saigon (Theatre Royal), Bombay Dream (Apollo Victoria); Around The World In Eighty Days (New York); Wuthering Heights (UK Tour). Television includes: EastEnders (BBC1); Doctors (BBC1). Film appearances include Disney’s Aladdin (Walt Disney Pictures).

Huw Parmenter’s (Giuseppe Renzo) theatre credits include: Anything is Possible (Pleasance Theatre); After Orlando (Vaults Theatre/Theatre Royal Stratford East); Desert Rats (Arts Theatre); The Late Wedding (Theatre Royal Stratford East); Dark Tourism (Park Theatre); Hearing The Song (Orange Tree Theatre). Huw is Co-Artistic Director of Chaskis Theatre. Television includes: Killing Eve (BBC America), Eastenders (BBC).

Gillian Saker’s (Lola Brewster) theatre credits include: Tick Tick Boom (Park Theatre); City Stories (Wilton’s Music Hall/Oxford Playhouse); The Rubenstein Kiss (Nottingham Playhouse/Guildford); Anna Karenina (West Yorkshire Playhouse/Royal Exchange Theatre); The Libertine (Citizen’s Theatre/); Othello (Riverside Studios; Offie nomination for ‘Best Actress’); Stephen Ward (West End); The River (Royal Court Theatre). Television includes: Endeavour (ITV); Ripper Street (BBC); Misfits (E4).

Simon Shepherd (Dermot Craddock) is best known for playing the role of Dr. Will Preston in the popular ITV television series Peak Practice. His theatre credits include: Misalliance; Precious Little (Orange Tree); Evening at the Talkhouse (National Theatre); Hay Fever (Duke of York’s); Duck House (Vaudeville); Posh (Royal Court/Duke of York’s). Other television credits include: Casualty, Father Brown (BBC); Tilly Trotter (ITV).

-ENDS-

For further information please contact Maisie Lawrence / Amy Deering at The Corner Shop PR on 020 7831 7657

LISTINGS

THE MIRROR CRACK’D by Agatha Christie adapted for the stage by Rachel Wagstaff

First performance: 15 February 2019 Final performance: 6 April 2019 Opening Night: 25 February

15 February – 9 March 2019 Salisbury Playhouse 01722 320 333 www.wiltshirecreative.co.uk

12 March – 16 March 2019 Gaiety Theatre, Dublin 0818 719388 www.gaietytheatre.ie

19– 23 March 2019 Cambridge Arts Theatre 01223 503333 www.cambridgeartstheatre.com

26 March – 6 April 2019 New Theatre, Cardiff 029 2087 8889 www.newtheatrecardiff.co.uk

NOTES TO EDITORS

Wales Millennium Centre is a landmark arts venue and a cultural destination, which presents the best available touring talent from across the globe as well as creating its own productions. The Centre is a charity whose aim is to Inspire our Nation, Impress the World. This is achieved by creating inspirational and life changing experiences that broaden horizons and touring productions that showcase Wales to the world. Wales Millennium Centre has been presenting world renowned visiting productions for over a decade and, as Wales’ national arts venue, have also invested in, and introduced, a wide variety of emerging theatre, contemporary work, artists and the very best international performers.

Wales Millennium Centre has created a portfolio of productions over the last decade which provide an insight into what the future might hold for the Centre, producing work from operas, play and musicals, to a major new festival, presenting work all over the world, from New York and to Dubai, as well as across the UK.

Recent productions and co-productions have included: Man to Man by Manfred Karge in a new version translated by Alexandra Wood which performed in London, New York and a UK tour; Only the Brave, a co-production with Soho Theatre, Daniel Sparrow Productions and Birdsong Productions; Mandela Trilogy, a UK and Ireland tour of this operatic tribute to one of the world’s most iconic figures; and La Voix Humaine, an immersive opera by Francis Poulenc, original lyrics from the play by Jean Cocteau, co-produced with WNO. 2016 saw Wales Millennium Centre produce its first festival, The Festival of Voice - celebrating what Wales is most famous for – voice. The 10-day event featured over 100 performances across the city, immersing Cardiff in the incredible talents of singers and performers from across the globe. In 2017 the centre produced and premiered Tiger Bay the Musical, a major new musical set in Cardiff’s Butetown at the dawn of the 20th century.

On its 7.5 acre site in Cardiff Bay, the Centre has a 1900 seat lyric theatre, named after its founding patron Sir Donald Gordon which is designed for opera, large scale musicals, ballet and contemporary dance. Other performance spaces include the 250 seat theatre – the Weston Studio, a 160 seat cabaret venue, a dance house, a 350 seat recital hall and a state of the art recording facility - BBC Hoddinott Hall.

Wales Millennium Centre is also home to eight other cultural organisations, including Welsh National Opera, BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Literature Wales, as well as inclusive arts organisation, Hijinx Theatre and the Touch Trust.

Annually the Centre receives over 1.5 million visitors making it Wales’ number one visitor attraction. For further information about the Centre please visit: wmc.org.uk

Wales Millennium Centre is a registered charity, number – 1060458.

About Wiltshire Creative

Launched in February 2018, Wiltshire Creative is a pan-arts organisation that brings together Salisbury Arts Centre, Salisbury International Arts Festival and Salisbury Playhouse.

Salisbury Playhouse is one of Britain’s leading producing theatres, with a national reputation for home- grown work of the highest quality that attracts audiences from across Wiltshire, Hampshire, Dorset and beyond. Recent productions include Chris Chibnall’s Worst Wedding Ever (part of our Original Drama programme), the regional premiere of Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Her Naked Skin, new musical Moonfleet by Gareth Machin and Russell Hepplewhite and Barney Norris’s Echo’s End.

This season Wiltshire Creative has also collaborated with LGBTQ+ museum Queer Britain on the exhibition Our Naked Skin and with musician Nick Harper on A Wiltshire Tale.

Salisbury International Arts Festival 2019 runs from 24 May to 8 June 2019 with Guest Festival Director composer Jonathan Dove.

For more information visit www.wiltshirecreative.co.uk

About Agatha Christie Limited

Agatha Christie Limited (ACL) has been managing the literary and media rights to Agatha Christie's works around the world since 1955, working with the best talents on stage, in film, television, publishing and on digital platforms to ensure that Christie’s work continues to reach new audiences in innovative ways and to the highest standard. The company is managed by Christie’s great grandson James Prichard.

Recent theatre collaborations include the critically-acclaimed Witness for the Prosecution at County Hall in London, working with Eleanor Lloyd Productions and Rebecca Stafford Productions, and Murder on the Orient Express adapted by Ken Ludwig, with productions at McCarter Theatre in Princeton and Hartford, Connecticut, USA. ACL also works closely with international theatre companies developing in-territory stage productions.

ACL’s recent television projects include the BBC One adaptations of Ordeal by Innocence, The Witness for the Prosecution and And Then There Were None, all produced alongside Mammoth Screen with screenplays from Sarah Phelps (Great Expectations, The Casual Vacancy). The latest BBC adaptation, The ABC Murders, will star John Malkovich and Rupert Grint and will be broadcast this winter.

November 2017 saw the release of 20th Century Fox’s feature film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s acclaimed mystery Murder on the Orient Express, directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot and with an all-star cast. A box office hit, Murder on the Orient Express will be followed by a big screen adaptation of Death on the Nile.