Mel Giedroyc to star in Much Ado About Nothing at the Rose Theatre

Bake Off presenter Mel Giedroyc is to star in Much Ado About Nothing at the Rose Theatre in Kingston next year.

Giedroyc will play Beatrice in Simon Dormandy's production in April next year, which will be the centre piece of the Rose's ten year anniversary season. The show is a co-production between Antic Face and Granville & Parham Productions.

The play will be set in a luxury spa hotel in Messina, run by Leonato and his no-nonsense customer experience manager Beatrice. Don Pedro, the mafia overlord and his entourage arrive to party, hidden in the Sicilian hills. The show will use Shakespeare's original language.

Dormandy commented: "A contemporary Sicilian setting offers the perfect social context for the play: an inflexibly patriarchal world, where daughters still marry as their fathers decree; a world brittle with honour and the law of vendetta; a south-Mediterranean world where a wedding is a major community event, and a shrine is still a place where magical things might just happen. "

Giedroyc is reunited with the director following the production of Luce at Southwark Playhouse last year. Her previous theatre credits include The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Eurobeat and New Boy.

Much Ado About Nothing runs at Rose Theatre Kingston from 18 April to 6 May, with previews from 13 April.