The Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh and Pitlochry Festival Theatre have announced full casting for Sound Stage’s first production, Angela; a brand-new autobiographical play by Mark Ravenhill airing from 26 – 28 March. 

Produced in association with Naked Productions and BBC Radio 3, Angela is an emotive exploration of working-class motherhood in the 1960s, told by one of Britain’s best loved dramatists as we have never heard him before.

Directed by Naked Productions’ Polly Thomas, the play will star Pam Ferris (Rosemary and Thyme, Call The Midwife) and Matti Houghton (Call the Midwife, Luther) as Angela; BAFTA winner Toby Jones (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Hunger Games) as Ted; and Jackson Laing (The Boy in the Dress, Matilda) and Joseph Millson (Betrayal, Mary Poppins) as Mark. 

Also appearing are Nadia Albina (Emilia, Macbeth), Dermot Daly (Accidental Therapists, Faith, Hope and Glory: Faith and Trevor), Raj Ghatak (Everybody’s Talking about Jamie, The Kite Runner), Olivier Huband (Barefoot in the Park, A Discovery of Witches), Alexandra Mathie (Macbeth, Amadeus), and Kirsty Stuart (The Duchess [Of Malfi], Faith Healer).

Playwright Mark Ravenhill said: “With the death of my mum in 2019, I was drawn for the first time to write an autobiographical play. I was particularly interested to explore the way culture high and low had impacted on Mum's life and our lives as a family. The play is constructed around a series of encounters with children's literature, classical ballet, amateur theatre, and popular song - encounters that shaped my mum's sense of self and her relationship with me. Both my parents are from working class backgrounds which gives a specific turn to their relationship to culture and to me. As I thought about a form that could move swiftly in time and location and between inner thought and outer action, I realised that this was best written as a radio play. I feel it's the most 'radio' of the radio plays that I've written…”

Sound Stage is a new audio digital theatre, which will premiere eight new audio plays in its first season, including Tennis Elbow by John Byrne, Hindu Times by Jaimini Jethwa, The Mother Load by Lynda Radley, Black Diamonds and the Blue Brazil by Gary McNair and Sophia by Francis Poet.

Each Sound Stage performance will be accompanied by a post-show event, inviting audiences to engage further with these exciting new plays.

Tickets for Angela, along with the remaining seven Sound Stage productions, go on sale on Sunday 14 February, and can be purchased through The Lyceum and Pitlochry Festival Theatre websites priced from £10 per play across the season.