Danielle Bird and Polly Lister will head the cast of The Worst Witch, Emma Reeves’s original story based on Jill Murphy’s series of novels, which opens at Northampton’s Royal and Derngate at Christmas 2018.
Bird plays the hapless Mildred Hubble. She was Drudge in Phillip Breen’s The Hypocrite, a Royal Shakespeare Company and Hull Truck presentation in the Swan Theatre, Stratford in 2017, and also appeared in Macbeth at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2016.
Lister takes the roles of Agatha and Miss Cackle. She played Michelle, Mother Superior, Barbara and Veronique in Tanya Ronder’s Table at the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme earlier in 2018 and Miss Havisham in Neil Bartlett’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations at Derby Theatre in 2017.
The cast also includes Rachel Heaton, Rebecca Killick, Rosie Abraham, Anna Crichlow, Molly-Grace Cutler, Megan Leigh, Emma Lau and Meg Forgan.
New Vic artistic director Theresa Heskins directs. Design is by Simon Daw. Lighting designer is Aideen Malone and sound design is by Leigh Davies. Vicki Amedume leads on aerial direction, Beverley Norris-Edmunds choreographs, music is by Luke Potter and magician John Bulleid creates illusions for the show.
The Worst Witch runs at Royal and Derngate from Tuesday 27 November until Sunday 30 December. It will go on a national tour in 2019.