Casting has been announced for Tennessee Williams’ rarely performed The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, playing at Charing Cross Theatre from 26 September-23 October.

Directed by Robert Chevara, this extraordinary play is set on an exclusive mountaintop villa off the Amalfi coast, and premiered in Spoleto, Italy in 1962.

Super rich, terminally ill, four-time widow Flora ‘Sissy’ Goforth sits in isolated splendour dictating her memoirs to the lovely but put-upon Blackie, her recently widowed young secretary. Then one day Christopher Flanders, a former poet, aging pretty boy, and professional house guest, climbs her mountain looking for an invitation to stay...

Stage, TV and film star Linda Marlowe (In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, Harold & Maude; Charing Cross Theatre) will play Flora, alongside Olivier Award-winning veteran actress Sara Kestelman as the Witch of Capri.

Completing the cast are Sanee Raval (I May Destroy You), Lucie Shorthouse (Everybody’s Talking About Jamie), Joe Ferrera and Matteo Johnson.

Director Robert Chevara said: “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore is a play I have always wanted to direct. A heady mixture of longing, passion and reflection on mortality, the play was written after Williams’ longtime lover Frank Merlo died from lung cancer. Merlo created the stability in Williams life, getting him off prescription drugs and weaning him off casual sex, which allowed him to create his most enduring plays. The grieving Williams wrote Milk Train as a direct response to his partner’s death and created a poetic work of art where a woman was helped to die well and easily by Angel of Death. Though rarely performed, it has often been referred to as a play worthy of its author’s justly celebrated name. The part of Flora Goforth is like a female King Lear. I cannot think of anyone better to play the part than the brilliant Linda Marlowe, with Sara Kestelman as the venomous, dazzling Witch of Capri. Two true theatrical legends.”

The production is designed by Nicolai Hart-Hansen, with lighting by Adam King, and casting by Ellie Collyer-Bristow.

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