Emlyn Williams’s gripping drama Accolade tours to the Theatre Royal Bath from Tuesday 2 to Saturday 6 July with a ten-strong cast led by Ayden Callaghan (Hollyoaks, Emmerdale), Honeysuckle Weeks (Foyle’s War, The Five) and Sara Crowe (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Private Lives).
Recently knighted author Sir Will Trenting appears to have it all - a stellar career, a Nobel Prize, the perfect family. But when a scandal from his secret past threatens to be exposed, the harsh realities of the price of success draws him and everyone he knows into a dark and chilling trial-by-media, facing the double standards of a society bent on destroying him. With razor sharp dialogue, poignant moments and unexpected twists at every turn, Emlyn Williams' play remains remarkably relevant nearly seventy-five years after its debut in 1950.
Ayden Callaghan, who stars as Will Trenting, is best known on television for his role as Joe Roscoe in more than 300 episodes of Hollyoaks from 2013 to 2016. In Emmerdale he played Miles De Souza in 2007 and 2008. His screen credits also include Bad Education, Casualty, EastEnders, Doctors and The Bill. On stage, Ayden starred as Frank Farmer in last year’s nationwide tour of The Bodyguard The Musical. His theatre credits also include starring in The Elephant Man at London’s Trafalgar Studios, touring in Bedroom Farce directed by Sir Peter Hall, performing in Carmen Revised at the Royal Albert Hall and appearing in a sold out run of Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me at the Edinburgh Festival and in the West End.
Honeysuckle Weeks, who stars as Rona Trenting, is best known on television as Samantha Stewart in Foyle’s War, a role she played across all eight series between 2002 to 2015. Her screen credits also include The Five, Lewis, Death in Paradise, The Charles Dickens Show and Where The Heart Is. Her theatre credits include Pygmalion and Love’s Labour’s Lost at Chichester, and Witness for the Prosecution and A Daughter’s A Daughter on UK tour. At the Theatre Royal Bath previously, she starred in Calendar Girls The Musical this spring, Absurd Person Singular in 2008 and The Best Man opposite Martin Shaw in 2017, prior to West End.
Sara Crowe plays the role of Marian Tillyard. Her film and television credits include Four Weddings and a Funeral, Born and Bred, EastEnders, Doctors and Midsomer Murders. Her stage performances in the West End include the Noël Coward plays Private Lives, for which she won the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress, and Hay Fever, for which she was Olivier Award nominated for Best Comedy Performance. This will be the eighteenth time Sara has performed in a production at the Theatre Royal Bath; starting with Private Lives alongside Joan Collins in 1990, and most recently in The Way Old Friends Do in 2023.
The cast is completed by Jamie Hogarth (Dom - The Play, Mamma Mia!) as Albert, David Phelan (Mission Impossible, Breakfast at Tiffany's) as Thane Lampeter, Louis Holland (Riding Liberty, The Crown) as Ian, Gavin Fowler (Merchant of Venice 1936, A Picture of Dorian Gray) as Harold, Sarah Twomey (Paddington in Peru, The Sandman) as Phyllis, Narinder Samra (Passenger, Happy Birthday Sunita) as Daker and Kayleigh Cooper (A Christmas Carol, Wonka) as Parlour Maid, Gladys.
Multi-award-winning Sean Mathias has directed productions in London, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Paris, Sydney, Cape Town and on Broadway, and won the Critics’ Circle Theatre Award, WhatsOnStage Award, Evening Standard Theatre Award, a Fringe First at Edinburgh and the Prix de la Jeunesse at Cannes. He was the Artistic Director of Theatre Royal Haymarket in the West End in 2009/2010, where his production of Waiting for Godot played two seasons, as well as touring internationally and in the UK, including to Bath in 2009. In 2013, he directed and co-produced Two Plays in Rep on Broadway, comprising Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Pinter’s No Man’s Land. Last summer, he directed Frank and Percy which toured to Bath starring Sir Ian McKellen and Roger Allam.
Set and costume design for Accolade is by Julie Godfrey with lighting design by Nick Richings and sound design by David Gregory. This production opened at the Theatre Royal Windsor on 31st May 2024 for a two-week run, before touring to Cambridge, Guilford, Bath and Richmond.
Emlyn Williams CBE (1905 - 1987) wrote fifteen plays including Accolade, which received its world premiere in the West End in 1950. His 1938 play, The Corn is Green, which was semi-autobiographical, ran in the West End, on Broadway and was adapted into a film starring Bette Davis in 1945. It was revived at London’s Old Vic in 1985 and at the National Theatre in 2022.
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