Lead casting has been announced for a 2018 UK tour of Terence Rattigan’s classic family drama, The Winslow Boy – directed by Olivier Award-nominated Rachel Kavanaugh. Tessa Peake-Jones (Only Fools and Horses, Grantchester) stars as Grace Winslow wife of Arthur Winslow, played by Aden Gillett (House of Eliott, Holby City), the father who embarks on an extraordinary campaign for justice for his son.
The tour opens at Chichester Festival Theatre on February 8th 2018 and sees Mark Goucher once again present a classic drama straight from seasons at the Chichester Festival Theatre and Birmingham Rep. The Winslow Boy follows acclaimed productions of The Kings Speech and Single Spies (the latter also directed by Kavanaugh). The production is set to visit other leading UK drama houses including Bath Theatre Royal, Oxford Playhouse, Cambridge Arts Theatre, Salford Lowry, Cheltenham Everyman Theatre, Brighton Theatre Royal, Belfast Grand Opera House, Richmond Theatre and Canterbury’s Marlowe Theatre.
Having been expelled from the Royal Navy College for stealing a five-shilling postal order, young cadet Ronnie Winslow’s entire family are pulled apart by the repercussions of this charge. Set against the values of 1910 Edwardian London, the Winslow family fight to clear his name or face social ostracism as the case becomes a national scandal. Based on a real-life event, The Winslow Boy is a courageous and often delicately humorous window into the class and political hypocrisy of the time.
The 1946 play became one of Rattigan’s best known and most loved works.
Tessa Peake-Jones appears as Grace Winslow. Now well-known as ‘Mrs Maguire’ in ITV1’s Grantchester, and has had a long, varied career including: Unforgotten (ITV), Marchlands (ITV), Doctor Who (BBC), Legacy (BBC) and, of course famously, ‘Raquel’ in Only Fools and Horses – a role she delighted the nation in for 15 years.
Tessa’s extensive theatre credits include: Beacons (Park Theatre), Home, Brimstone and Treacle (Arcola Theatre), Park Avenue Cat (Arts Theatre London), The Five Wives of Maurice Pinder (National Theatre), Shirley Valentine (Haymarket Theatre Basingstoke), The Park, Hamlet, A Comedy Of Errors (RSC), Pride and Prejudice (Leicester Haymarket/Old Vic), The Misanthrope, The Vortex, The Beaux’ Stratagem (Cambridge Theatre Company), Romeo and Juliet (Birmingham Rep), Quartermaine’s Terms (Bristol Old Vic/Stephen Joseph Theatre), The Winter’s Tale (Thorndike Theatre), Ring Around The Moon (Bristol Old Vic).
Aden Gillett plays Arthur Winslow in the new touring production, having appeared in the 1999 David Mamet’s directed big screen version as John Waterstone. Other film roles include The Borrowers, Collusion, Under the Lighthouse Dancing, Shadow of the Vampire and Tula, The Revolt. Forthcoming films include The Foreigner starring Jackie Chan and Piers Brosnan and A Caribbean Dream where he plays Theseus in a beautiful modern reimagining of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Gillett is best-known for his depiction of Jack Maddock in The House of Eliott, alongside starring performances in Silks, Pollyanna, Vera, Lewis, Midsomer Murders, Father Brown, Innocents, The Queen’s Sister, Ivanhoe, Holby, The Harry Enfield Show, The Impressionists and The Tenth Kingdom.
Further casting to be announced.
