Full Cast Announced For The UK Première Of MARY SEACOLE At The Donmar Warehouse

With Max Webster's production of Shakespeare's Henry V starring Kit Harington currently running at the Donmar, Artistic Director Michael Longhurst and Executive Director Henny Finch today announce the full casting for the UK première of Jackie Sibblies Drury's MARYS SEACOLE. Nadia Latif directs Déja J. Bowens (Mamie), Llewella Gideon (Duppy Mary), Kayla Meikle (Mary), Esther Smith (Miriam), Olivia Williams (May), and Susan Wooldridge (Merry). The production opens on 21 April, with previews from 15 April, and runs until 4 June.

Mary Seacole was the pioneering Jamaican nurse who bravely voyaged to heal soldiers in the Crimean War. She was a traveller, a hotelier and a businesswoman. She was the most impressive woman you've ever met.

Putting the concept of a biopic through a kaleidoscope, MARYS SEACOLE is a dazzling exploration across oceans and eras of what it means to be a woman who is paid to care, and how, ultimately, no one is in charge of their own story.

Directed by Nadia Latif, the UK premiere of Pulitzer Prize winner Jackie Sibblies Drury's celebrated new play reunites the team behind her critically-acclaimed Fairview in 2019.

Déja J. Bowens plays Mamie. She recently graduated from Mountview; and this production marks her professional stage debut.

Llewella Gideon returns to the Donmar to play Duppy Mary - her previous work for the company includes The Vote. Her other theatre work includes The Long Song (Chichester Festival Theatre), The Amen Corner (Bristol Old Vic), The Big Life (Theatre Royal Stratford East), Faith, Hope and Charity (Théâtre Odéon Paris/Vienna WienFestwochen), Septimus Bean and the Amazing Machine (Unicorn Theatre), Play Mas (Orange Tree Theatre), Birthday (Royal Court Theatre), The Best of Little Big Woman, The Little Big Woman, The Little Big Woman Show (Dual Impact), and Family Man, The Sunshine Boys (B&S Productions). For television, her work includes Sneakerhead, Small Axe, Mangrove, The Real McCoy, Absolutely Fabulous, Nighty Night, Big Train, Murder Most Horrid, Alex Rider, Game Face, Millie In-Between, Still Open All Hours, Birthday, Sir Lenny Henry's Comedy of Colour, Big School, Giggle Biz, Trigonometry, Delivery Man, PsychoBitches, The Old Shop of Stuff, Hotel Trubble, and The Lenny Henry Show; and for film, Paddington, A Street Cat Named Bob, My Jerome, Black Sea, Second Coming, Manderlay, Nativity, Absolutely Fabulous - The Movie, and Harry Hill - The Movie.

Kayla Meikle plays Mary. For theatre, her work includes Paradise, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet (National Theatre), Living Newspaper Edition 5, Shoe Lady, Ear for Eye, Primetime (Royal Court Theatre), Vassa, Dance Nation (Almeida Theatre), All My Sons (The Old Vic), A Midsummer Night's Dream, Jack & The Beanstalk (Lyric Hammersmith), Monologue Slam (TRI FORCE), Merlin (Nuffield Theatre), The Taming of the Shrew (Arts Theatre), and All That Lives (Ovalhouse). For television, her work includes Nightingale, The Girl Before, Ear for Eye, Small Axe, The Capture, Afterlife and Will; and for film, Medusa Deluxe, Morning Song, and Soundproof.

Esther Smith plays Miriam. Her theatre work includes Fairview (Young Vic), Parliament Square (Royal Exchange Theatre/Bush Theatre), Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Palace Theatre), NSFW (Royal Court Theatre), The Honeyman (Derby Live), When It Falls (Soho Theatre), Carrot (Theatre503/ Latitude Festival), Many Moons (Theatre503), Limbs (Present Tense) (nabokov), The Author (Royal Court Theatre/international tour), and This Child (Southwark Playhouse). For television, his work includes Trying, Defending The Guilty, Cuckoo, Zapped, Uncle, Ballot Monkeys, Black Mirror, Cockroaches, Flack, The Midnight Beast, The Smoke, Holby City, Skins Redux: Rise, Deadbeats, Misfits, and Material Girl; and for film, Elephant.

Olivia Williams returns to the Donmar to play May - her previous work for the company includes Hotel in Amsterdam. Her other theatre work includes Tartuffe, Mosquitoes, Waste, Happy Now?, Love's Labour's Lost, Richard III (National Theatre), Scenes from a Marriage (St James' Theatre), In A Forest Dark and Deep (Vaudeville Theatre), The Changeling (Cheek by Jowl), and for the RSC, Peer Gynt, The Wives' Excuse, The Broken Heart, Wallenstein, and Misha's Party. For television, her work includes The Crown, Call My Agent, My Name is Leon, Unprecedented, The Nevers, Counterpart, The Halcyon, Manhattan, Salting the Battlefield, Playhouse Presents: City Hall, Case Sensitive, Dollhouse, Miss Austen Regrets, Krakatoa, Agatha Christie, Friends and Emma; and for film, The Trouble with Jessica, Victoria and Abdul, Man UP, Altar, Maps to the Stairs, Sabotage, Last Day on Mars, Seventh Son, Hyde Park on Hudson, Anna Karenina, Now is Good, Hanna, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, An Education, The Ghost, Flashbacks of a Fool, There for Me, X-Men 3, Tara Road, Valiant, To Kill a King, Heart of Me, Below, Man from Elysian Fields, Lucky Break, Born Romantic, The Body, Dead Babies, Sixth Sense, Rushmore, The Postman and Gaston's War.

Susan Wooldridge plays Merry. Her theatre credits include Hay Fever (Citizens and Lyceum Theatre), Uncle Vanya (Almeida Theatre), What the Women Did (Southwark Playhouse), Lay Down Your Cross (Hampstead Theatre), A Snake in the Grass (Print Room), The Importance of Being Earnest (Regent's Park Open Air Theatre), Don't Look Now (Sheffield Theatres and Lyric Hammersmith), Tonight at 8.30 (Chichester Festival Theatre), Playhouse Creatures (West Yorkshire Playhouse), Celebration (Almeida Theatre and Lincoln Center), A Family Affair (Theatre Royal Bath/UK tour), Collateral Damage (Tricycle Theatre), The Price (Bristol Old Vic), Three Sisters (Birmingham Rep), The Deep Blue Ocean (Royal Exchange Theatre), Map of My Heart (Gielgud Theatre), and Look Back in Anger (Young Vic). Foer television, her work includes War of the Worlds, A Very English Scandal, Still Star Crossed, Poirot, The Flood, Pinochet's Progress, Eleventh Hour, The Brief, 20,000 Streets Under the Sky, The Commander, Courtroom, The Last Detective, The Worts Witch, The Writing Game, Preston Front, Hand Made Moon, Under the Hammer, Bad Company, The Hummingbird Tree, Ticket to Ride, The Devil's Disciple, Time and the Conways, Byron, The Jewel in the Crown, and The Naked Civil Servant; and for film, The Lady, Tamara Drewe, Just Like a Woman, Afraid of the Dark, Twenty-One, How to Get Ahead in Advertising, Bye Bye Blues, Hope and Glory, Loyalties, Butley, The Shout, Dead Man's Folly and Frankenstein.

Jackie Sibblies Drury's plays include Marys Seacole - OBIE Award, Fairview - 2019 Pulitzer Prize,a??Really,a??Social Creatures, anda??We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915.a??The presenters of her plays include the Young Vic, Lincoln Center Theatre, Soho Rep, Berkeley Rep, New York City Players & Abrons Arts Center, Victory Gardens, Trinity Rep, Woolly Mammoth, Undermain Theatre, InterAct Theatre, Actors Theater of Louisville, Company One, and the Bush Theatre. She has developed her work at Sundance, Bellagio Center, Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Soho Rep. Writer/Director Lab, New York Theatre Workshop, Bushwick Starr, LARK, and MacDowell Colony, among others.a?? She has received the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, a Jerome Fellowship at The LARK, a United States Artists Fellowship, a Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, anda??a Windham-Campbell Literary Prize in Drama.a??a??

Nadia Latif directs. She is a theatre maker, screenwriter and film director. From 2018 - 2020, she was Genesis Director at the Young Vic, where she directed the acclaimed UK première of Jackie Sibblies Drury's Fairview in 2019. Her other theatre credits include Nightclubbing (Lowry/Camden People's Theatre/Tour), Fall of the Kingdom and Rise of the Footsoldier (RSC), Octagon and But I Cd Only Whisper and The Ballad of Crazy Paola (Arcola), Homegrown (NYT), Even Stillness Breathes Slowly Against a Brick Wall (Soho), Carrot (Latitude/Theatre503), Coalition, Wild Horses and Slaves (Theatre503); and for film, They Heard Him Shout Allahu Akbar (Film4), My England (Young Vic) and White Girl (BFI).

MARYS SEACOLE OPEN WORKSHOP

Saturday 14 May, 10.30am - 12.30pm

£12.50 (£7.50 for 16-25 year olds)

Open to anyone over 16, our Open Workshops offer extra insight into our work. Join the Donmar Resident Assistant Director for a two-hour workshop exploring the themes of the production and take part in some of the exercises used by the company in the rehearsal room.

Patrons will have the option to book for the Open Workshop when booking tickets for the production - these do not need to be booked on the same day.

Box Office: www.donmarwarehouse.com / 020 3282 3808

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