The Party Girls
The sensational story of the Mitford sisters.
The glamorous Mitford girls cut a glorious swathe through pre-war high society, amidst the glittering world of debutantes and dukes. But as Fascism rises and political storm clouds crackle over carefree country houses, the bonds of sisterhood are threatened by new and treacherous desires.
Amy Rosenthal’s compelling, touching and witty new play explores the true story of a family riven by political extremism, seen through the eyes of Jessica (Decca) Mitford as she battles to stay true to her beliefs.
Nancy aspires to be a celebrated novelist, Diana and Unity fall for the dangerous, charismatic leaders of the Far Right in Britain and Germany, and Debo sets her cap at a Duke. Meanwhile Decca crosses continents in her own passionate pursuit of love – but can she ever escape her sisters and her past?
Venue
Presented by
Marlowe Theatre
Price
Special Offers
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Written by
Amy Rosenthal
Directed by
Richard Beecham
Designed by
Simon Kenny
Please scroll for full list of Creatives
Access Performances
Audio Described: Sat 11 Oct at 2.30pm
A Free Touch Tour is available to book at 1pm before the Audio Described performances.
Captioned: Wed 8 Oct at 7.30pm
Age Guidance
12+
Please note, no under 5s will be admitted to the auditorium.
Cast
Kirsty Besterman
Theatre credits include: Habeas Corpus (Menier Chocolate Factory), Macbeth (National Theatre tour), Genesis Inc, Experience (Hampstead Theatre), Winter Solstice (ATC), Betrayal, Separate Tables, Dangerous Corner (Salisbury Playhouse Theatre), They Drink It in the Congo (Almeida Theatre), Tipping the Velvet (Lyric Hammersmith Theatre), Arcadia (ETT & ATG), Tonight at 8.30 (ETT), Private Lives (Royal Lyceum), The School For Scandal (Park Theatre) Playhouse Creatures (Chichester Festival), Foxfinder (Finborough Theatre) The Importance of being Earnest (Rose Theatre Kingston) Edmond, The Great Gatsby (Wiltons Music Hall) Liberty, Much Ado about Nothing, Merchant of Venice, Holding Fire (Shakespeare’s Globe), Twelfth Night (Ludlow Theatre Festival) Amy’s View (Nottingham Playhouse) The Rivals (Theatre Royal Bath) Othello (Cheek by Jowl), King Lear (RSC).
Television credits include: The Sandman, Vigil, Professor T, Grantchester, Top Boy, War of the Worlds, Doctor Who, His Dark Materials, Holby City, Father Brown, Silent Witness, Foyle’s War and Doctors.
Film credits include: Rupture and Chicken
Joe Coen
Theatre credits include: Leopoldstadt (Wyndham’s Theatre), The Sweet Science of Bruising (Southwark Playhouse), A Dark Night in Dalston (Park Theatre), The Mighty Walzer (Manchester Royal Exchange), Bad Jews (St James Theatre/Arts Theatre/Theatre Royal Bath), The Rubenstein Kiss (Nottingham Playhouse/Yvonne Arnaud Guildford), Edward II (Manchester Royal Exchange), Birdsong (Harold Pinter Theatre).
Television credits include: Kaos, The Outlaws, Angela Black, Plebs, The Lost Honour of Christopher Jeffries, Da Vinci’s Demons, The Bible.
Film credits include: The Critic, Son of God, City Rats.
Elisabeth Dermot Walsh
Theatre credits include: Ring Round the Moon (Playhouse Theatre), The Country Wife (Theatre Royal Haymarket), The Alchemist and The Life of Galileo (National Theatre), Rebecca (UK tour), The Rivals (Bristol Old Vic), Aristocrats (Abbey Theatre), The Misanthrope and The Shape of Things (Gate Theatre Dublin), Pride & Prejudice and Two Plays After: The Bear (Gate Theatre at the Spoleto Festival) Cyrano de Bergerac (Nuffield Theatre),The Winslow Boy and Easy Virtue (Chichester), and Wuthering Heights (West Yorkshire Playhouse).
Television credits include: Miss Scarlet and The Duke, Sister Boniface, The Well, Holby, Fiona’s Story, Midsomer Murders, The Commander, Love Soup, 20,000 Streets Under The Sky, Poirot, My Hero, Murphy’s Law, Bertie and Elizabeth, Love in A Cold Climate, Cleopatra, Falling For A Dancer, Unfinished Business and for 15 years, until 2024, Elisabeth played Dr Zara Carmichael in Doctors.
Film credits include: From Time to Time.
Emma Noakes
Theatre credits include: Rebus: A Game Called Malice (Queen’s Theatre), Abigail’s Party (Park Theatre), The Rover (Royal Shakespeare Company), Two Noble Kinsmen (Royal Shakespeare Company), Separate Tables and Bedroom Farce (Salisbury Playhouse), The Winter’s Tale (Royal Shakespeare Company), Proof, The Rivals, The Admirable Crichton (New Vic), Charged (Soho Theatre), Wuthering Heights (Birmingham Rep), Pygmalion (Old Vic), The Sea (Theatre Royal Haymarket).
Television credits include: Casualty, Call the Midwife, The Salisbury Poisonings, Shakespeare and Hathaway, New Worlds, Doctors, Holby City and The Bill.
Film credits include: The Other Boleyn Girl.
Winner of BBC Carleton Hobbs Radio Award Emma’s radio credits include: Mr. Pye, Road to Ferrera, Shakespeare’s Fire, Mad Girl, The Fall and Rise of Danny Clarke, Maurice, The Brothers Karamazov (Radio 4). She’s also a series regular in Big Finish’s Second Dr Who audios, is an experienced audiobook narrator and a voice actor for video games.
Ell Potter
Theatre credits include: The Last Show Before We Die (HOTTER Project), The Chilled Aisle and Is This A Woman Thing (NTFS), Peter Pan (Shipwright Theatre), HOTTER and FITTER (Ellie Keel Productions / HOTTER Project).
Television credits include: Cheaters, Doctor Who.
Audiobook credits include: Boy, All Our Yesterdays, Something Extraordinary, Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein, Trouble, Tales of World War II, Under the Harrow, Berlin, Winter Nights, A Most Intriguing Lady, Marvellous, To the Lighthouse, Tell Me How It Ends, Beyond That The Sea, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of English Fairies, Briefly, A Delicious Life, Elsewhere, Twin Crowns, Miss Eliza’s English Kitchen, The Shape of Darkness, The Great Godden, Her Heart For A Compass, Love and Fury, Half Sick of Shadows, The Bookshop of Second Chances, The Heiress, Girl A, Little Scratch, Hamnet, A Cloud of Outrageous Blue and more.
For BBC Radio: It’s Me, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Snow And The Works On The Northern Line, In At The Deep End, Mill on the Floss, Dark, Salt, Clear, The Blackrock Girl, The Country Girls Trilogy, The Unwelcome.
Flora Spencer-Longhurst
Theatre credits include: The Forsyte Saga (Park Theatre), And Then There Were None (Fiery Angel, China tour), Amélie (Criterion Theatre), Seagulls and Beryl (Octagon Theatre Bolton), A Pupil (Park Theatre), The Real Thing (Rose Theatre/Theatre Royal Bath/Cambridge Arts), Much Ado About Nothing/Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Christmas Truce (RSC), Titus Andronicus (The Globe), Once (Phoenix Theatre), The Importance of Being Earnest – The Musical (Theatre Royal Windsor/Riverside Studios), The Beggar’s Opera (Regent’s Park Theatre), Wonderland (Riverside Studios and Assembly Rooms Edinburgh), A Christmas Carol (King’s Head Theatre), Girl with a Pearl Earring (Theatre Royal Haymarket), Ghosts (Young Vic), The Children’s Hour (Royal Exchange Theatre) and The Member of the Wedding (Young Vic).
Television credits include: Oasis, Midsomer Murders, The Bastard Executioner, Father Brown, Leonardo, Chickens, Unforgiven, Wallander, The Real Deal, Losing It, The Family Man, Lewis and Dalziel & Pascoe.
Film credits include: Say Your Prayers and Walking with the Enemy
Creative Team
Writer
Amy Rosenthal
Amy Rosenthal
Amy Rosenthal is a British playwright. She won The Sunday Times Drama Award with her debut play Henna Night in 1999.
Theatre credits include: Birth (Soho Theatre); A Quiet Voice (Kiln Theatre); Fear of Cherry Blossom (Cheltenham Everyman Theatre); Pelican Daughters (Shakespeare in Shoreditch and RIFT); Entanglement (Nova Music Opera and UK Tour); Polar Bears (A Play, A Pie, A Pint and West Yorkshire Playhouse); The Tailor Made Man (Arts Theatre); Beware of Young Girls: The Dory Previn Story, co-written with Kate Dimbleby (Matcham Room, Leicester Square Hippodrome); The Man Who Came To Brunch (Bush Theatre); Liberation (Yad Arts, Tricycle Theatre); The Workroom (RADA); Jitterbug Blitz (Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith); On The Rocks (Hampstead theatre); A Handbag (Old Vic 24 Hours Plays Celebrity Gala); Daring Pairings (Hampstead Theatre); Sitting Pretty (Watford Palace Theatre, UK Tour & Hypothetical Theatre, New York); Westminster (Paines Plough, Wild Lunch Series); Jerusalem Syndrome (Soho Theatre); Henna Night (Chelsea Theatre, Scarborough Festival) and Lifelines (Royal Court Young Writers Festival).
For BBC Radio 4: Thin Ice and Little Words (original plays); adaptations from Jack Rosenthal television films: Cold Enough For Snow, Eskimo Day, Bar Mitzvah Boy, Tortoise; and Jack Rosenthal’s Last Act (a four-part adaptation of the autobiography).
Film credits include: The Clinic (in development with Atlas Films) and That Woman (UK Jewish Film Festival, Pears Short Film Winner).
Director
Richard Beecham
Richard Beecham
Richard read English at Oxford University and trained as a theatre director at RADA/King’s College London, at the National Theatre Studio and on the Regional Theatre Young Director Scheme.
Theatre directing credits include: Duet For One (Orange Tree); Footfalls/Rockaby (Jermyn Street Theatre/Theatre Royal, Bath); Gaslight, Broken Glass, How The Other Half Loves, Neville’s Island and A Taste of Honey (Watford Palace); 84 Charing Cross Road (Cambridge Arts Theatre / UK Tour); Driving Miss Daisy (Theatre Royal Bath / UK Tour); Rose (HOME, Manchester); Playing For Time (Sheffield Crucible); Dancing at Lughnasa, In Praise of Love and Humble Boy (Theatre Royal Northampton); In A Garden and Red Light Winter (Ustinov Studio, Bath); Henry IV Part 1 (Theatre Royal Bath); Rutherford & Son (Northern Stage); The Human Cost and Just Before the War (Young Vic); National Event Holocaust Memorial Day (Theatre Royal, Newcastle); The School for Scandal, The Invention of Love, Side by Side by Sondheim and The Miser (Salisbury Playhouse); Charley’s Aunt, Private Lives, Two Gentlemen of Verona and Black Comedy/ Real Inspector Hound (Northcott theatre, Exeter); Romeo & Juliet (Creation Theatre Company, Oxford); The Bench (Battersea Arts Centre); Early One Morning and Entertaining Mr Sloane (Bolton Octagon) and Eulogy for a Hard Man (Live Theatre, Newcastle).
Film directing credits include: The Guitar (Eye to Eye Productions/Meerkat Films).
Designer
Simon Kenny
Simon Kenny
Simon Kenny is the Set & Costume Designer for A Thousand Splendid Suns at Birmingham Rep.
Musical Theatre credits include: Lord Of The Rings (Chicago, Aukland, Sydney); Rehab The Musical (West End); The Lord Of The Rings; Whistle Down The Wind (Watermill); The Lion (Southwark Playhouse/Arizona Theatre Company, Japan, Korea); The Light in the Piazza, Merrily We Roll Along (Royal Academy of Music); The Wiz (Hope Mill); Ghost Quartet (Boulevard Theatre); Assassins (Watermill/Nottingham Playhouse); Cabaret (English Theatre Frankfurt/Deutsches Theater Munich); the multi award-winning Sweeney Todd in a purpose-built pie shop (West End/Off-Broadway, Drama Desk nomination – Outstanding Set Design of a Musical).
Other theatre credits include: Romeo and Juliet (Belgrade, Coventry); Link In My Bio (Luxembourg Opera), The Unseen (Riverside Studios); Bodies of Water (ATC); Here In America, Duet For One (Orange Tree, Richmond); Steel, Brassed Off (Theatre By The Lake); One Last Push (Wiltshire Creative); Murder In The Dark (UK Tour); The Real & Imagined History of the Elephant Man (Nottingham Playhouse); Family Tree (ATC); Blue/Orange (Royal & Derngate Northampton); Nothello (Belgrade/Coventry City of Culture); The Art of Illusion, The Death of a Black Man (Hampstead); Footfalls & Rockaby (Jermyn Street); Antigone (Mercury Colchester); several UK tours for Eclipse including The Gift (Stratford East) and Black Men Walking (Royal Exchange); Crongton Knights, Noughts & Crosses (Pilot/UK tours); Red Dust Road (National Theatre of Scotland); Giraffes Can’t Dance (Curve); The Children (English Theatre Frankfurt); Holes (Nottingham Playhouse/UK tour); Broken Glass (Watford Palace); Babette’s Feast (The Print Room); Rose (HOME); Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare’s Globe).
Lighting Designer
Aideen Malone
Aideen Malone
Composer & Sound Designer
Adrienne Quartly
Adrienne Quartly
Adrienne Quartly is the Composer and Sound Designer for The Party Girls.
Recent theatre credits include: The Playboy of the Western World (National Theatre); This is Not A Happy Room (Kings Head Theatre); Aladdin (Watford Palace Theatre Company); The Cat and the Canary (UK Tour); Kim’s Convenience (Riverside Studios / Park Theatre); The Wasp; Two Popes, (The English Theatre Frankfurt); Medusa’s First Kiss (Little Angel Theatre); Get Happy (The Barbican); Paddington Lo-Commotion (Histrionic Productions, Blenheim Palace); The Price (Gate Theatre, Dublin) and The Tempest (RSC).
Video Designer
Dick Straker
Dick Straker
Movement Director
Quinny Sacks
Quinny Sacks
Fight Director
Haruka Kuroda
Haruka Kuroda
Haruka Kuroda is a U.K. based Japanese multidisciplinary artist excelling as an actor, voice-over artist, fight director, and intimacy coordinator.
Recent Fight Director credits include: The House Party (Leeds Playhouse & UK Tour); Of Mice and Men (Derby Theatre); Three Sisters (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse); Kinky Boots The Musical (Leicester Curve Theatre); Ballet Shoes (National Theatre); Never Let Me Go (Kingston Rose Theatre); A Raisin in The Sun (Headlong/ Leeds Playhouse/ Oxford Playhouse/ Lyric Hammersmith); Pagliacci; Edgar (Holland Park Opera); Ernani (Buxton Opera House); The Comedy of Errors (Guildhall School of Music and Drama); The Taming of The Shrew (Shakespeare’s Globe); The House Party (Chicester Festival Theatre); Underdog: The Other Brontë (National Theatre); Romeo & Juliet (The New Wolsey Theatre) and Jekyll & Hyde (National Theatre).
Casting Director