Freema Agyeman, Desmond Barrit and Joseph Millson will join Tony Award winner Stockard Channing in Jamie Lloyd’s new production of the darkly funny and haunting play Apologia.
Freema will be best known to UK audiences as Martha Jones, companion to David Tennant’s Doctor Who, but she has also starred as Amanita in Netflix’s hit drama Sense8. She joins the eagerly awaited West End return of Channing, whose popular film and TV credits include starring roles in The West Wing, The Good Wife, her Oscar® nominated role in Six Degrees Of Separation, and the iconic role of Rizzo in the film Grease.
Desmond’s many stage credits include the Royal Shakespeare Company’s acclaimed The Comedy Of Errors, for which his performance earned him an Olivier Award for Best Comedy Performance, while Millson is also a prolific stage and screen actor, best known for his recent TV work on the BBC’s hit primetime shows The Last Kingdom and Banished.
Freema said: “I am absolutely overjoyed to be joining the cast of Apologia. It’s right up my street and had me roaring with laughter!
“It’s fun. It’s clever. It’s deeply insightful. And I feel I couldn’t be in safer, more experienced hands for my theatre debut than those of Alexi Kaye Campbell and Jamie Lloyd. Or in better company than the inimitable Stockard Channing!”
Olivier Award winner Alexi Kaye Campbell’s Apologia centres on Kristen Miller (Channing), a firebrand liberal matriarch and eminent art historian. Attending a birthday gathering, events quickly turn sour as the cracks in her family relationships are brought to the surface by the recent publication of her memoir, with secrets emerging about the sacrifices she has made and about the price paid by those she loves.
The production also marks the return to the Trafalgar Studios of Jamie Lloyd, following his critically acclaimed productions of The Ruling Class and Macbeth starring James McAvoy, and his hit production of Richard III with Martin Freeman.
The show begins previews at Trafalgar Studios on 29 July, and will play until Saturday 18 November.