Simon Rouse, who played Jack Meadows in long-running police drama The Bill for 20 years, is to take to the London stage as part of the Tricycle theatre’s The Bomb – A Partial History season.
Rouse, who was regularly in the thick of explosive goings on at Sun Hill police station between 1990 and 2010, leads a cast that also includes Belinda Lang, Simon Chandler, Michael Cochrane, Nathalie Armin, Paul Bhattacharjee, Tariq Jordan, Shereen Martin, Daniel Rabin, Rick Warden and David Yip.
Running between 9 February and 1 April, The Bomb – A Partial History sees Tricycle theatre Artistic Director Nicolas Kent return to the venue’s thematic presentations; offering a collection of short pieces by a variety of playwrights around a central theme.
The Bomb, which explores nuclear armament, is split into two halves: First Blast: Proliferation, which focuses on 1940-1992; and Second Blast: Present Dangers, which looks at 1992 until the present day. Among the playwrights lending their incendiary words to the project are Zinnie Harris, Ron Hutchinson, Lee Blessing, Amit Gupta, John Donnelly, Colin Teevan, Diana Son, Ryan Craig and David Greig, who have created pieces that range from the tale of two Birmingham scientists to a North Korea preparing for war.
The Bomb – A Partial history is the third time the Tricycle theatre has chosen to focus a season of short plays around one topic, following the hugely successful The Great Game: Afghanistan and Women, Power And Politics. It plays as part of the wider Tricycle Goes Nuclear festival and was inspired by a conversation between Kent and Baroness Shirley Williams who wondered why, with the decision date on Britain’s Trident programme edging ever nearer, the theatre was not tackling the nuclear weapons debate.
MA