TIM WALKER’S CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED
BLOODY DIFFICULT WOMEN
ANNOUNCES EDINBURGH FESTIVAL RUN
★★★★★ Adam Boulton
★★★★★ Kevin Maguire
Wind of Change, in association with Cahoots Theatre Company, today announce the run of Tim Walker’s Bloody Difficult Women at the Assembly Rooms for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2022. Bloody Difficult Women will be running at the Ballroom at the Assembly Rooms from 3 to 28 August 2022, following an extended run at Riverside Studios this Spring.
‘Powerful’ ‘A must-see’
Michael Billington The Spectator
‘Witty and civilised but with a brutal undertow’
WhatOnStage
The production, inspired by the court case Gina Miller brought against Theresa May in 2016 and with the final climatic scene set in the present is directed by Stephen Unwin. Returning to the cast will be Jessica Turner as Theresa May, Andrew Woodall as Paul Dacre and Graham Seed as Sir Hugh Rosen, with further cast to be announced.
Denise Silvey, the producer, says, “I’m thrilled to be bringing Bloody Difficult Women to Edinburgh. It’s so exciting to be returning to the Festival after three years away. In 2019 we were lucky enough to bring the sell-out production of Musik to Edinburgh and now here we are again and hope the Festival audiences will be as kind to us this year as they have been to us in the past. Go Edinburgh!!”
Tim Walker, the writer, says: “Any show that is as honest about the English political classes and their media as Bloody Difficult Women was always going to make itself powerful enemies south of the Border, but in London it made a lot of great friends, too, and played to packed and appreciative houses night after night and the run had to be extended. It’s a play that has a lot to say for itself about the mess we’re in and I’ve a feeling Scotland will appreciate it not pulling its punches.”
Wind of Change in association with Cahoots Theatre Company presents
BLOODY DIFFICULT WOMEN
By Tim Walker
Cast: Jessica Turner (Theresa May), Graham Seed (Sir Hugh Rosen) and Andrew Woodall (Paul Dacre) with more to be announced
Director: Stephen Unwin; Designer: Nicky Shaw; Lighting Designer: David Howe
Sound Designer: John Leonard
3 – 28 August 2022
“If standing up for what you believe to be right is being ‘bloody difficult’, then so be it”
Theresa May
Tim Walker’s brand-new drama sees the tumultuous political events of recent years played out in a power struggle between two determined women.
His intensely human account of the court case Mrs Miller brought against Mrs May makes for revealing and often very funny theatre, but ultimately, it’s a tragedy, where there are no winners, only losers. Walker brings the story bang up to date in a dramatic finale which says so much about the deep divisions we still have in our country.
Jessica Turner plays Theresa May. Her theatre work includes A Song at Twilight, Present Laughter (Theatre Royal Bath and UK tour), The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich (RSC), All My Sons (Rose Theatre Kingston and The Watermill Theatre), The Second Mrs Tanqueray (Rose Theatre Kingston), Lettice and Lovage (The Watermill Theatre), Persuasion (Salisbury Playhouse), Wallenstein (Chichester Festival Theatre), Waste (Almeida Theatre), Girl in the Goldfish Bowl (Sheffield Theatres), Mary Stuart, Oedipus (Nuffield Southampton), Cuckoos (Barbican and Bath Theatre Royal), King Lear (The Old Vic and UK tour), Albert Speer, The White Chameleon, The Beaux Stratagem (National Theatre) and Good (Donmar Warehouse). For television, her work includes, Father Brown, Law and Order UK, New Tricks, Heartbeat, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, 10 Days to War, Waking the Dead, The Line of Beauty, Spooks, The Cazalets, The Ambassador, The Mill on the Floss and All or Nothing at All; and for film, The Ottoman Lieutenant, The Murder of Princess Diana and Deeply.
Graham Seed plays Sir Hugh Rosen. His theatre work includes The Mousetrap (UK and India tour), The Ladykillers (New Wolsey Theatre, Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch and Salisbury Playhouse co-production), Flare Path, Basketcase, Journey’s End (UK tours), An Audience with Jimmy Savile (Park Theatre and Edinburgh Festival), Dead Sheep (Park Theatre and UK tour), Bedroom Farce, Separate Tables (Salisbury Playhouse), Yes, Prime Minister (Chichester Festival Theatre and UK tour), Accolade, Too Good to Be True (Finborough Theatre), The Skin Game (Orange Tree Theatre), Present Laughter (Theatr Clwyd) and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (Almeida Theatre and UK tour). For television, his work includes Casualty, Doctors, The Durrells, He Kills Coppers, The Chatterley Affair, Station Jim, Band of Brothers, Nature Boy, Dinnerladies, Ashenden, Jeeves and Wooster, Victoria Wood as Seen on TV, Cab, Who’s Who, Brideshead Revisited and I Claudius; and for film, Peterloo, Bonded by Blood II, Tezz, Wild Target, Morning Jericho, These Foolish Things, AKA, Honest and Gandhi. Seed played series regular Nigel Pargetter over 27 years for BBC Radio 4’s The Archers.
Andrew Woodall plays Paul Dacre. His theatre work includes Admissions (Trafalgar Studios), Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Wendy and Peter Pan (RSC), First Light (Chichester Festival Theatre), The Wars of the Roses (Rose Theatre Kingston), Great Britain (National Theatre/Theatre Royal Haymarket), The Browning Version/South Downs (Harold Pinter Theatre and Chichester Festival Theatre), Benefactors (Sheffield Theatres), The Knowledge/Little Platoons (Bush Theatre), Women Beware Women (National Theatre), Hedda Gabler (Gate Theatre Dublin), Much Ado About Nothing, The Voysey Inheritance, The Life of Galileo (National Theatre), Gaslight (The Old Vic), As You Like It (Wyndham’s Theatre), As You Desire Me (Playhouse Theatre) and The Sugar Syndrome (Royal Court Theatre). For television, his work includes, The Reckoning, Lockwood and Co., Des, Granchester, Lucan, New Worlds, An Adventure in Time and Space, Miranda, Silk, New Tricks, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Above Suspicion, Men are Wonderful, Personal Affairs, Place of Execution, Lawless, Hear the Silence and Charles II; and for film, Where is Anne Frank, Solo: A Star Wars Story, 303 Squadron, The Riot Club, Belle, Johnny English Reborn, Hypnotic, The Count of Monto Cristo and Regeneration.
Tim Walker is an author, broadcaster and British Press Award-winning journalist. He had a unique insight into the cases Gina Miller brought against the governments of Theresa May and Boris Johnson as he advised her on media strategy on both occasions. He has worked in staff positions on The Observer, the Daily Mail and The Sunday Telegraph, where he was the theatre critic. More recently, he has written columns for the Daily Mirror and The New European. He stood briefly as the Lib Dem parliamentary candidate in Canterbury in the last election. Star Turns, his latest book, was published in September.
Stephen Unwin directs. Unwin founded the English Touring Theatre in 1993. For the company, he directed more than 30 productions of classical and new plays, including award-winning productions of Hamlet with Alan Cumming, Hedda Gabler, Henry IV Parts One and Two with Timothy and Samuel West, King Lear with Timothy West, The Seagull with Cheryl Campbell and Ghosts with Diana Quick and Daniel Evans. These transferred to the Donmar and the Old Vic. He produced two plays by Jonathan Harvey and Peter Gill’s award-winning The York Realist as well as Sir Peter Hall’s production of Uncle Vanya. In 2008, he became Artistic Director of the new Rose Theatre in Kingston, which he ran until January 2014. His productions there included Hay Fever with Celia Imrie, The Importance of Being Earnest with Jane Asher, The Lady from the Sea with Joely Richardson, The Vortex with Kerry Fox and Day in the Death of Joe Egg with Ralf Little. He hosted the very successful Time to Talk series with 50 leading actors and personalities. Also an author, he has written 10 books on theatre, drama and related subjects, as well as numerous articles for newspapers and journals. He is also active in campaigning for the rights of the disabled. He is Chairman of KIDS, a national charity which provides a wide range of services for disabled children, young people and their families.
LISTINGS
BLOODY DIFFICULT WOMEN
Ballroom, Assembly Rooms, 54 George St, Edinburgh EH2 2LR
Box Office: https://assemblyfestival.com/ / 0131 623 3030 or Assembly box offices at Assembly Hall and Assembly Roxy, Assembly George Square, Assembly Checkpoint and Assembly Rooms
DATES
3 – 28 August at 2:30pm, excluding 11 and 22 August
TICKET PRICES
Preview tickets £12
Standard tickets £13 – £16
RUNNING TIME
90 minutes