Jan Ravens and Julia Watson are cast in Talking Heads, three of the much-loved classic monologues from British playwriting royalty, Alan Bennett, directed by Watford Palace Theatre’s own artistic director Brigid Larmour. Poignant, comic and full of humanity, Talking Heads invites us into the hearts and minds of three peculiarly English ladies – Muriel in her tweed skirt and pearls in Soldiering On, the public-spirited Miss Ruddock in A Lady of Letters, and Susan, the long-suffering Vicar’s wife in Bed Among The Lentils.
Jan Ravens is one of the UK’s most successful impressionists. She is a long running star of BBC’s Dead Ringers and her Theresa May impression has achieved cult status, going viral on social media and with over 1 million views on YouTube. She is a regular contributor across BBC Radio 4, on programmes such as Just A Minute and I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, alongside current affairs programmes such as Broadcasting House, The Week in Westminster and Today. On stage, she achieved rave reviews and broke box office records with her solo show Difficult Woman and she recently completed a sell-out tour with Rory Bremner.
Director, and artistic director of Watford Palace Theatre Brigid Larmour said, “This project was made for Jan. Even as a student at Cambridge she combined a virtuosic skill with accents and comedy, with an ability to get under the skin of a character and break your heart. She will make Alan Bennett’s brilliant writing sing.”
Alan Bennett has been one of our leading dramatists since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s. His television series Talking Heads has become a modern-day classic, as have many of his works for the stage, including Forty Years On, The Lady In The Van, A Question of Attribution, The Madness of George III (together with the Oscar-nominated screenplay The Madness of King George) and an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. At the National Theatre, The History Boys won Evening Standard, Critics’ Circle and Olivier awards, and the South Bank Award.
Talking Heads was a series of 12 dramatic monologues written for BBC television. The two series were first broadcast in 1988 and 1998, and have since been broadcast on BBC Radio and included on the A-level and GCSE English Literature syllabus.
Talking Heads is at Watford Palace Theatre 4th – 29th March 2020.
