Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic and Hull Truck Theatre are teaming up to bring to the stage Graham Linehan’s new adaptation of the classic comedy The Ladykillers.
The production was first staged at Liverpool Playhouse in 2011 before transferring to the West End and also going on a national tour.
The plot involves criminal mastermind Professor Marcus and a motley crew of misfits posing as amateur musicians to rent rooms from the sweetly eccentric Mrs Wilberforce. The police have no idea that they are planning a daring robbery. But Mrs Wilberforce is not easily deceived.
With his brilliant plot rumbled, the Professor decides there is only one way to keep the old lady quiet—Mrs Wilberforce must face the music. And he does not mean a string quartet...
The Ladykillers reunites New Vic favourites Andrew Pollard and Michael Hugo who appeared as Phileas Fogg and Passepartout in Laura Eason’s adaptation of the Jules Verne novel Around the World in Eighty Days at the Staffordshire theatre-in-the-round in 2013.
Joining them on stage are Andy Gillies, Anna Kirke who was in the London Classic Theatre Company national tour of Peter Shaffer’s Equus in 2011, Matthew Rixon who was also in Around the World in Eighty Days, Timothy Speyer who had roles in the Royal Shakespeare Company productions of The Witch of Edmonton by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford, and The Roaring Girl by by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker and Matt Sutton who played Joe in the Paines Plough, Hull Truck and Watford Palace production of Tom Wells’s Jumpers for Goalposts in 2013.
The production also features a community chorus who will play the roles of Mrs Wilberforce’s social circle.
Directed by Mark Babych, The Ladykillers runs at the New Vic from Friday 10 April until Saturday 2 May before heading to Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre and then Hull Truck Theatre.