Lee Evans & Sheila Hancock star in new West End comedy Barking in Essex

Lee Evans will return to the West End next year to star opposite Sheila Hancock in the premiere of Clive Exton's new comedy Barking in Essex, which opens at Wyndham's Theatre on 16 September 2013 (previews from 6 September).

Evans, who was last seen in the West End revival of Pinter's The Dumb Waiter in 2007 (for which he won a Whatsonstage.com Award), will play "the village idiot of the criminal underworld", while Hancock plays his mother Emmie.

Billed as a "diabolically funny play", Barking in Essex centres on Algie Packer, Essex's most notorious gangster. He's done seven years inside and now he's coming home to collect his booty - £3,672,000 in untraceable notes. But there's something Algie's family have forgotten to mention...  The Packers are Essex's lovable, but most dysfunctional family. 

Perrier Award-winning comedian Lee Evans’ West End credits include his popular turn as Leo Bloom in The Producers at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, for which he was nominated for a Whatsonstage.com Award, as well as Samuel Beckett’s Endgame opposite Michael Gambon at the Albery Theatre in 2004. His films include Funny Bones, There’s Something About Mary, The Fifth Element, The Ladies Man, The Martins and The Medallion.

Sheila Hancock's recent stage credits include The Last of the Duchess, Sister Act, The Anniversary and Cabaret (for which she won the Olivier for Best Supporting Performance in a Musical). On screen she has appeared in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Love and Death in Long Island and myriad TV series including Grumpy Old Women and EastEnders. She was appointed a CBE in 2011.

Clive Exton, who died in 2007, was best known for writing scripts for TV series including Poirot, Jeeves and Wooster and Rosemary and Thyme and the film 10 Rillington Place. He wrote Barking in Essex in 2005.

Barking in Essex is directed by Harry Burton (who directed Evans in The Dumb Waiter) with casting by Anne Vosser. It's produced by Michael Edwards and Carole Winter for MJE Productions.

- by Theo Bosanquet

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