Holliday Grainger, Olivia Hallinan, Emily Taaffe have been cast as the sisters and Paul McGann as Vershinin for a new production of Chekov’s Three Sisters.
The four have an impressive list of television and stage credits between them.
Holliday Grainger, who will play Irina, was Bonnie in TV mini series Bonnie & Clyde and Lucrezia Borgia in Sky Atlantic's The Borgias; her stage credits include Athol Fugard's Dimetos at the Donmar Warehouse.
The role of Olga will be taken by Olivia Hallinan who appeared in all four series of BBC TV's Lark Rise to Candleford. Her stage credits include Precious Little Talent at Trafalgar Studios and Herding Cats at Hampstead Theatre.
Emily Taaffe, who will play Masha, has worked for the RSC as Miranda in The Tempest, Viola in Twelfth Night and Luciana in The Comedy of Errors, and for the National Theatre in The Cherry Orchard, The King James Bible and The Veil.
Paul McGann has appeared extensively films and TV series including Withnail & I, Luther, A Mother’s Son, Ripper Street and The Bletchley Circle. On stage his credits include Simon Gray's Butley in London's West End.
Also in the cast are David Carlyle, Emily Dobbs, Michael Garner, Dudley Rogers, Tom Ross-Williams, Joe Sims, Jane Thorne and Thom Tuck. Russell Bolam directs.
Chekov’s classic has been reworked by award-winning playwright Anya Reiss and will have a five-week run at London's Southwark Playhouse. She previous adapted Chekhov’s The Seagull.
Her other work includes The Acid Test and Spur of the Moment for which she won the Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright Award and the TMA Best New Play Award.
You can hear a BTG podcast with Anya Reiss, in which she discusses her work on Chekhov’s The Seagull.
Three Sisters opens at London's Southwark Playhouse on 3 April.