Jennifer Kirby Will Lead THE MASSIVE TRAGEDY OF MADAME BOVARY at Jermyn Street Playhouse

Jermyn Street Theatre has announced that Call The Midwife star, Jennifer Kirby will star in their forthcoming production of The Massive Tragedy of Madame Bovary! by Peepolykus co-artistic director John Nicholson - an irreverent and uproarious take on Gustave Flaubert's celebrated 1856 novel. Kirby will take the eponymous role of Madame Bovary, with the rest of the four strong cast soon to be announced

In addition to playing the cockney nurse Valerie Dyer in the Sunday night BBC1 drama, Kirby has a rich stage career, which includes Gregory Doran's productions of Henry IV parts One and Two and Henry V for The Royal Shakespeare Company, Pride and Pejudice for Regent's Park Open Air Theatre and The Recruiting Office for Salisbury Playhouse. She is currently appearing in NBC Universal's fantasy horror series Vampire Academy broadcast in the UK on Sky.

Emma Bovary is bored. She's bored with her boring doctor husband, bored with her boring provincial village, and bored with her role as a dutiful wife in (boring) nineteenth-century France. But Emma reads novels. Lots of novels. And in novels, life is considerably more riotous... In Jermyn Street Theatre's Christmas production, a small cast of actors battle hilarious mishaps and misbehaving props to tell the (massively) tragic story of Madame Bovary.

When his seminal work was first published in mid-nineteenth century France, Flaubert was prosecuted for obsecenity. Now this scandalous chronicle of marital breakdown and domestic tragedy is hailed as one of the best novels ever written. Orginally written for Peepolykus and previously staged in Liverpool and Bristol, John Nicholson's adaptaion employs his trademark ridiculous and anarchic humour to stage this classic novel as a breakneck comical romp.

Director, Marieke Audsley makes her Jermyn Street Theatre debut, whilst Nicholson returns to the theatre following the staging of his smash hit The Hound of the Baskervilles there in 2017.

Jermyn Street Theatre Artistic Director Stella Powell-Jones says - "It's thrilling to welcome the incredible Jennifer Kirby to the theatre in this iconic role, beloved for generations, here given a hilarious new life."

Jermyn Street Theatre is the West End's smallest producing theatre. The Stage's Fringe Theatre of the Year 2021, it is led by Artistic Director Stella Powell-Jones, co-Founder and Executive Director Penny Horner, and Executive Producer David Doyle. The theatre won a 2022 Critics' Circle Award for its lockdown theatre, and previous Artistic Director Tom Littler won the 2022 OffWestEnd Award for Best Artistic Director. The programme includes outstanding new plays, rare revivals, new versions of European classics, and high-quality musicals, alongside one-off musical and literary events. It collaborates with theatres across the world, and its productions have transferred to the West End and Broadway. During the pandemic, the theatre responded with its Brave New World season of digital work, including the acclaimed 15 Heroines with DigitalTheatre. Since reopening, the theatre has produced two Footprints Festivals of new work alongside acclaimed productions by Samuel Beckett, Sarah Ruhl, and Howard Brenton.

Flaubert is explored more at Jermyn Street Theatre in the forthcoming Promise Season with the debut play by historian Orlando Figes. The Oyster Problem tells the story of the French novelist's catastrophic search for a day job. The Promise Season, which runs for the first six months of 2023, also includes
the world premiere of Timberlake Wertenbaker's stage adaptation of Henri-Pierre Roché's autobiographical novel Jules and Jim , Misha Levkov's In the Net , Katherine Moar's Farm Hall and the rediscovery of Miles Malleson's drama, Yours Unfaithfully. Full details can be found at www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk

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