Michele Austin, Richard Cant & More to Join Kate Fleetwood in West End's MEDEA

The Almeida Theatre announces full casting for Medea. Rupert Goold will direct Euripides' masterpiece, as one of world drama's most infamous characters is brought to life in a new version by controversial feminist writer Rachel Cusk.

Alongside the previously announced Kate Fleetwood, who makes her Almeida debut in the title role, thecast will include Michele Austin, Guillarmo Bedward, Sarah Belcher, Amanda Boxer, Richard Cant, Ruth Everett, Georgina Lamb, Emily Mytton, Charlotte Randle, Lukas Rolfe, Justin Salinger, Louis Sayers, Sam Smith, Xavier Moras Spencer, Andy de la Tour and Joseph West.

Medea's marriage is breaking up. And so is everything else. Testing the limits of revenge and liberty, Euripides' seminal play cuts to the heart of gender politics and asks what it means to be a woman and a wife.

Design is by Ian MacNeil, costume by Holly Waddington, composition and sound by Adam Cork and choreography by Scott Ambler. Casting is by Julia Horan CDG.

Rachel Cusk was selected by Granta as one of their Best Young British Novelists in 2003. Author of seven novels and three works of non-fiction, she won the Whitbread First Novel Award for Saving Agnes, a Somerset Maugham Award for The Country Life, and was shortlisted for the 2007 Orange Prize for Arlington Park. Her latest novel, Outline, was shortlisted for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.

Kate Fleetwood is currently appearing in Maria Friedman's production of the Cole Porter musical High Society at the Old Vic, having previously been nominated for Best Actress in a Musical at the Olivier Awards for her performance in the National Theatre's London Road. She was nominated for Best Actress at the Tony Awards for her role as Lady Macbeth in Rupert Goold's acclaimed production of Macbeth (Chichester Festival Theatre/ West End/ Broadway). Her other theatre credits include King Lear and Love's Labour's Lost (both National Theatre), Hecuba and Life is a Dream (both Donmar Warehouse), The Winter's Tale/Pericles (Royal Shakespeare Company), The Tempest and The Two Noble Kinsmen (both Shakespeare's Globe), and Our New Girl (Bush Theatre). On film she has appeared in the BAFTA-winning Philomena, London Road, Les Miserables and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1.