Donna Air for Waterloo East Watcher, New Season

Television presenter Donna Air who has fronted shows such as The Big Breakfast and worked for MTV’s Select, will return to the stage in Jeremy Paul’s psychological drama The Watcher which was announced today (24 January 2011) as part of Waterloo East’s spring season. The play will open on 11 March (previews from 8 March) for a limited season until 2 April 2011.

Air appears in the two-hander alongside Jon Shaw, whose recent credits include Trilby for the Finborough Theatre, with the pair directed by Roger Martin. The Watcher is described in marketing material as a tale of power, status and gender politics. Promising to examine the abuse of power by those in authority, the play sees two characters navigate the fine line between fact and fiction before drawing to an “unexpected conclusion”.

Having appeared alongside Byker Grove contemporaries Jill Halfpenny and Ant & Dec, Air’s recent television credits include roles in the BBC’s Hotel Babylon and Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks. Jeremy Paul’s The Secret of Sherlock Holmes played an eight-week run at the West End’s Duchess Theatre starring Peter Egan and Robert Daws from July to September last year.

Also announced today, Waterloo East Theatre will present a ‘WET Rep’ season with four plays performed by a company of actors. Opening on 11 February (previews from 8 February) and playing until 4 March, the season features Anna Jordan‘s experimental social networking play Bender and a combination of her three best shorts Shortstuff; Edinburgh Fringe success, Jo Stokes‘ one-woman comedy Laundry; and Jonathan Bonfiglio’s political drama Tatchell about a member of the gay rights campaigner’s failed election ambitions.

Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist will also play Waterloo East, presented in a new translation by John Laskin and Michael Aquilante, from 5 to 10 April by Neil Sheppeck and his company LOVE&MADNESS.

First toured to mark the company’s tenth anniversary, the updated version remains based on the strange case of anarchist railway worker Giuseppe Pinelli, who was accused of bombing a bank and later “fell” to his death from a fourth floor police station window in 1969.