Maureen Lipman will reprise her role in the Park Theatre hit Daytona when Oliver Cotton’s acclaimed drama transfers to the Theatre Royal Haymarket for a limited season this summer.
First seen at the Finsbury Park theatre in July 2013, Daytona will play from 28 June to 23 August and marks the Theatre Royal Haymarket’s first ever collaboration with an Off West End venue.
Described as “funny, poignant and full of mystery”, playwright Cotton will join the West End cast to star in the David Grindley-directed production alongside Lipman and fellow returning cast member Harry Shearer.
Set in New York in 1986, Joe and Elli are practising their ballroom dance routines for the next big competition. Despite constant bickering, the love they have shared for nearly 50 years is clear. Then one night, out of the blue, Joe’s long-lost brother Billy bursts back into their lives with an extraordinary story to tell.
Screen and stage star Lipman will reprise her role as Elli in the production. While the show marks her Theatre Royal Haymarket debut, Lipman has appeared in numerous West End hits during the course of her acclaimed and varied career. Recent credits include When We Are Married and A Little Night Music, while at the National Theatre she has racked up appearances in shows including Oklahoma!, Macbeth, Long Day’s Journey Into Night and School For Scandal.
As her onstage partner, Shearer makes his West End debut having spent much of his career in a rather different occupation, voicing the characters of Mr Burns, Principal Skinner and Ned Flanders in the iconic cartoon The Simpsons. On screen he has appeared in This Is Spinal Tap, a film he also co-created, and The Truman Show, as well as being a cast member and writer on the US’s hugely popular Saturday Night Live.
Completing the cast is the multi-talented Cotton, who, as well as being a familiar face for screen appearances in series including A Touch Of Frost and Diamond Geezer, boasts numerous stage credits including Passion Play at the Duke of York’s, the Old Vic’s A Flea In Her Ear and Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 at Shakespeare’s Globe.
Daytona will follow star-studded thriller Fatal Attraction into the theatre when the Trevor Nunn-directed production comes to a close on 21 June.