Initial casting is announced today for the West End transfer of Laura Wade’s The Watsons, following sold-out runs at both Chichester Festival Theatre and the Menier Chocolate Factory.
Samuel West directs Sam Alexander (Robert Watson), Sally Bankes (Nanny), Jane Booker (Lady Osborne), Elaine Claxton (Mrs Edwards), Ralph Davis (Lord Osborne), Tim Delap (Mr Howard), Sophie Duval (Mrs Robert), Louise Ford (Laura), John Wilson Goddard (Mr Watson), Rhianna McGreevy (Margaret Watson), Grace Molony (Emma Watson – she was Evening Standard Award nominated for her performance), Elander Moore (Bertie), Paksie Vernon (Elizabeth Watson) and Cat White (Miss Osborne), who reprise their roles. Full casting will be announced shortly.
The production opens at the Harold Pinter Theatre on 18 May, with previews from 8 May, and runs until 26 September.
Directed by Samuel West, The Watsons played to critical acclaim at Chichester Festival Theatre in 2018, and completed its run at the Menier in November 2019.
Nineteen and new in town, Emma Watson’s been cut off by her wealthy aunt. She needs to marry, and fast, or be faced with a life of poverty and spinsterhood stuck in her humdrum family home.
Luckily, she has plenty of prospective suitors asking to dance, from dashing socialite Tom Musgrave to the stinking rich, socially awkward Lord Osborne. Which partner to pick?
So far, so familiar, but that’s when Jane Austen stopped writing. Two hundred years on, her forgotten heroine’s happy ending still hangs in the balance.
Picking up an unfinished novel, Olivier Award-winner Laura Wade’s ‘ingenious and triumphant’ (Evening Standard) new comedy pops the bonnet on Jane Austen’s world and asks: what happens when a writer loses the plot and fictional characters take control of their tale?
