Rebecca Ryan who will be familiar to many people through her roles in the Channel 4 series Shameless and the BBC drama Waterloo Road is to feature in Solace of the Road at Derby Theatre.
Olivier Award-winning writer Mike Kenny has adapted Siobhan Dowd’s novel which was shortlisted for the Costa Children's Book Award 2009, the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize 2009 and the Bisto Children's Book of the Year Award 2010.
Siobhan Dowd died from breast cancer in 2007 at the age of 47. Solace of the Road was her final novel and was published posthumously.
The play features Holly who is going on a road trip to find her mum. She sets off as her glamorous blonde alter ego Solace. This is how her “bittersweet and sometimes hilarious journey” begins as Solace swaggers and Holly tiptoes across England, discovering her true self and unlocking the secrets of her past.
Rebecca Ryan played Jo in Derby Theatre and Hull Truck Theatre’s co-production of Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey in 2014.
Playing her mother will be Polly Lister who was in Derby Theatre’s production of Cooking with Elvis by Lee Hall in 2013.
The rest of the cast includes Naomi Ackie, Neal Craig, Jack Finch and Robert Vernon. Derby Theatre’s artistic director Sarah Brigham directs.
Solace of the Road runs from Friday 27 February until Saturday 14 March.