March 2010 : General News

John Henshaw, who starred as Meatballs alongside Manchester United legend Eric Cantona on the big screen in Looking for Eric last year, has been cast by director Noreen Kershaw as Ronnie in Cathy Crabb’s Beautiful House at the Library Theatre, which runs between Thursday 22 April - Saturday 8 May.

“Beautiful House is a cracking piece of writing, says John, well known to TV viewers as put-upon pub landlord Ken in both series of BBC2’s hilarious sitcom Early Doors, as well as regular appearances in TV shows such as Cops, Linda Green, and The Royle Family. “It’s destined, I think, to burn bright and burn long. I cannot wait to start rehearsals.”

Beautiful House focuses on Ronnie and Bridgette, who have left their lovely home in Delph, in the foothills of the Pennines, so that their seriously ill daughter and her husband can spend what little time she has left in the home she grew up in. They move to a flat in a Salford tower block that their son-in-law has bought as an investment, only to find that their new neighbours in the flat below are not quite what they expected.

Bridgette, Ronnie’s wife, is played by Janice Connolly, one of the leading figures on Manchester’s bustling comedy circuit thanks to her creation Mrs Barbara Nice, and also well known to TV viewers having played busybody Holy Mary in both series of Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights.

The neighbours in the flat below, Otis and Paula, will be played by James Foster, who was in the original production of Beautiful House at Studio Salford in 2009 and was recently seen on the Library Theatre stage in Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Soul of Szechuan, and Sally Carman, who has appeared since 2004 as Kelly Ball in nearly 30 episodes of Channel 4’s Shameless.

Book tickets for Beautiful House here.