The Wire’s Dominic West brings Butley, Simon Gray’s sharp and darkly comic assault on academia back to the West End.

Ben Butley is having a monumentally bad day. So bad, he is making sure everyone else has a worse one. His estranged wife has taken up with the most boring man in London, his beloved protégé has found a new benefactor, and, in an unprecedented act of betrayal, even the English department’s resident failure has a book deal.

Butley’s trusty arsenal – mischievous irony and gleeful troublemaking – have never failed him yet. Might they finally prove to be the weapons of his own tragic self-destruction?

West, who played Jimmy McNulty in five season of HBO drama The Wire, was last seen on the London stage in Life Is A Dream at the Donmar Warehouse. His previous theatrical outings include Rock ‘N’ Roll, The Voysey Inheritance, As You Like It and The Seagull.

West is joined in Butley by Penny Downie, who recently played Gertrude opposite David Tennant in Hamlet, and Paul McGann (Withnail And I).

For more about Butley at the Duchess theatre read the First Night Feature or the Big Interview with Paul McGann.