Mikron Theatre Will Premiere New Play About the Radical MP Jennie Lee

Mikron have announced that this April they will be premiering Jennie Lee, a new play by Lindsay Rodden, with original songs and integrated audio description, charting the extraordinary life of the radical Scottish politician, Westminster's youngest MP, so young that, as a woman in 1929, she couldn't even vote herself.

The first Minister for the Arts and founder of the Open University many people will never have heard of her work, yet it has inspired and enabled so many.

Jennie Lee left her coal-mining family in Scotland and fought with her every breath for the betterment of all our lives. She believed that every person deserved their share of the fruits of the earth – for wages, health, and housing, and for art and education too.

Tenacious, bold, and rebellious, Jennie cut her own path through history.

Her role in the foundation of the Open University and the expansion of the Arts Council aided Jennie's fight for bread and roses, and in doing so, changed the twentieth century.

Oh yes, and founder of the NHS Nye Bevan was her husband. But Jennie is no footnote in someone else's past.

Alongside this formidable couple, audiences will meet Winston Churchill, Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher, and a whole host of other characters.

With an eclectic mix of musical styles from Music Hall to 1920s Flappers, Mikron's cast of four actor-musicians Eddie Ahrens (A Force to Be Reckoned With, Mikron Theatre) and newcomers Georgina Liley, Lauren Robinson and Mark Emmons will take you on a journey with Jennie from Cowdenbeath to Westminster.

Playwright Lindsay Rodden said, “When I first decided to find out about the remarkable life of Jennie Lee, I knew very little about her. I knew about her commitment to bettering the lives of her class, how striking and fascinating she seemed, and that she was usually known, if she was known at all, as the wife of Aneurin Bevan. What I didn't know then was that this daughter of a coal-miner, who became an MP at an age when, as a woman, she couldn't even vote herself, lived a long and fascinating life, bore witness to the all the horror and pride of the twentieth century, and made history herself. Her life was full of drama and theatre, and I knew I had to put it on the stage. In fact I could have written three plays from her eighty-eight years of struggle and triumph, and telling her story with a cast of just four – luckily supremely talented! – actors has been quite the challenge.

Jennie faced down Churchill in the Commons on her first appearance, she travelled all over the world, and she gave us the Arts Council and the Open University as we know them. She was clever, erudite, stylish and funny, stubborn and sharp too. I wish I had known her. Putting her on the stage is the next best thing. I can't wait for audiences to get to know her too.”

Jennie Lee is directed by Mikron Theatre Company's Artistic Director Marianne McNamara (Atalanta Forever, Mikron Theatre), designed by Celia Perkins (Dick Wittington, Oldham Coliseum), with music composed by Sonum Batra (Red Sky at Night) and musically direction and arrangement by Mikron newcomer Robert Cooper (Cinderella, Lawrence Batley Theatre).

The new play will be touring alongside the premiere of Common Ground, Poppy Hollman's hill...arious new play that rambles through the history of land access in England.

‘Jennie Lee' will premiere at the Marsden Mechanics Hall on 5 April and then tour nationally by canal, river, and road until 19th October.

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