Sharon Gless Is Round-heeled Woman at Riverside

American TV star Sharon Gless, best remembered as detective Christine Cagney from the long-running 1980s police drama Cagney and Lacey, will star in the British premiere of A Round-heeded Woman, about a woman’s sexual liberation in later life. The production will have a limited season at west London’s Riverside Studios from 19 October to 20 November 2011 (preview 18 October). The play, adapted and directed by Jane Browse, is based on Jane Juska’s best-selling 2004 memoir of the same name.

Retired Californian English teacher and divorcee, Jane Juska realised, after 30 years of being “severely deprived” of touch, that she “liked men”. She decided to place a personals ad in the New York Review of Books: “Before I turn 67 – next March – I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.” Juska received 63 replies, from men aged between 32 and 84, and went on to write of her experiences in A Round-Heeled Woman – My Late-Life Adventures in Sex & Romance.

The stage adaptation, starring Gless as Juska, was workshopped in San Francisco in early 2010 and had a run in Miami from December 2010 to February 2011.

A Round-heeded Woman returns Sharon Gless to the London stage, where she’s previously appeared in Chapter Two and an adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery. Her other American TV credits include Queer as Folk and Burn Notice.

The production is designed by Matthew Wright, lit by Nick Richings and presented by Brian Eastman, with Andrew Welch as executive producer. Further casting is still to be announced.