2017 Funny Women Awards host and Dead Ringers star Jan Ravens is set to star in a stage production of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads at the Watford Palace Theatre from 4-29th March 2020.
The impressionist, whose Theresa May impression has yet to be bested, and BBC Radio 4 regular will share the stage with Casualty’s Julia Watson. The pair will perform Bennett’s comical yet stirring monologues, Muriel in Soldiering On, Miss Ruddock in A Lady of Letters and Susan in Bed Among the Lentils. Talking Heads was originally a series of 12 monologues for BBC television, broadcast in 1988 and 1998.
The venue’s artistic director Brigid Larmour, who attended Cambridge university with Ravens, 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 is at Watford Palace Theatre, 4 – 29th March 2020. Performances 7.30pm, matinees Weds and Sat 2.30pm
