CFT casting update: Jenna Russell in WOMAN IN MIND, Harry Lloyd & Claire Skinner in THE NARCISSIST

Latest casting for Festival 2022 at Chichester Festival Theatre:

Jenna Russell plays the leading role in Alan Ayckbourn’s WOMAN IN MIND

Harry Lloyd and Claire Skinner head the cast of Christopher Shinn’s THE NARCISSIST

Full company confirmed for Roy Williams’s SING YER HEART OUT FOR THE LADS

Jenna Russell will lead the cast of Alan Ayckbourn’s WOMAN IN MIND, which Anna Mackmin will direct in the Festival Theatre from 23 September – 15 October.

Jenna’s extensive theatre work includes Sunday in the Park with George in London and on Broadway, for which she won an Olivier Award and was nominated for a Tony; Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings at the National Theatre, the title role in Piaf (Nottingham Playhouse) and Anna Mackmin’s production of Di and Viv and Rose (Vaudeville Theatre). Television includes Midsomer Murders, Gentleman Jack, EastEnders and Call The Midwife; she appeared at Chichester in Celebrating Sondheim in 2020.

Director Anna Mackmin (who replaces Justin Martin due to a scheduling conflict) makes her Chichester debut; her theatre work includes Hedda Gabbler and The Real Thing (Old Vic), Me and My Girl (Sheffield Crucible) and Really Old, Like Forty-Five (National Theatre).

Harry Lloyd and Claire Skinner will head the cast of Christopher Shinn’s new play THE NARCISSIST, directed by Josh Seymour, running in the Minerva Theatre 26 August – 24 September. The cast also includes Caroline Gruber, Akshay KhannaStuart Thompson, Paksie Vernon and Jenny Walser.

Harry Lloyd’s many screen credits include Game of Thrones, Arcane, Counterpart, Marcella, Wolf Hall, Manhattan and the forthcoming The Lost King; his theatre work includes The Dumb Waiter (Hampstead Theatre), The Duchess of Malfi (Old Vic), and The Little Dog Laughed, A View from the Bridge and The Sea in the West End.

Claire Skinner starred in the hugely popular BBC sitcom Outnumbered; other recent screen work includes McDonald & Dodds, Vanity Fair and The Pale Horse, whileher extensive theatre work includes A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (West End), Nightfall (Bridge Theatre), The Winter’s Tale and Othello (National Theatre).

The Narcissist was initially commissioned by Fictionhouse.

In Roy Williams’s SING YER HEART OUT FOR THE LADS,running in the Minerva Theatre from 22 July – 13 August, original cast members Harold Addo, Makir Ahmed, Alexander Cobb, Rob Compton, Kirsty J Curtis, Jennifer Daley, Michael Hodgson, Sian Reese-Williams, Richard Riddell and Mark Springer will be joined by Samuel Armfield, Steven Dykes, Duramaney Kamara and Jem Matthews.

Nicole Charles’s much-praised productionearned critical and public acclaim when it was staged in Chichester’s Spiegeltent in 2019, and will be revived by Joanna Bowman. Part of the Minerva Theatre will be transformed into a pub setting to create an immersive theatrical experience for this World Cup and Women’s Euro year.