Imogen Stubbs, English actor, and writer, is cast as Rose in Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds’ own production of Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children.

Directed by the theatre’s own Artistic Director, Owen Calvert-Lyons, The Children was hailed as “one of the top 3 plays” in The Guardian’s recent Best Theatre shows of the 21st Century list.

Premiering at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2016 then transferring to Broadway where it was nominated for Best Play at both the Tony Awards and the Outer Critics Circle, The Children is the latest production to be part of Theatre Royal’s commitment to presenting the best plays of the last 10 years.

Imogen Stubbs will play Rose, a retired nuclear scientist who challenges old friends, Hazel and Robin, to consider what impact their past actions will have on the world. This is a play that impresses with its capacity to raise big issues; in particular how people in the future will react to the poisoned legacy of the present.  A play about social responsibility and whether having children sharpens, or diminishes that.

Director, Owen Calvert-Lyons believes Imogen is perfect for the part, “Imogen is one of our country’s most celebrated actors. Audiences will know her work from both stage and screen. The Children is a powerful play and it needs great actors to play these parts; we were delighted when Imogen accepted the role. We are a relatively small theatre so our audiences are in for a real treat, getting to witness powerhouse performances up close.”

Imogen Stubbs was born in Northumberland and lived briefly in Portsmouth, where her father was a naval officer, before moving with her parents to London, where they lived in a barge on the Thames.

Educated at St. Paul’s and then Westminster, she won a scholarship to Oxford University, where she gained a First-Class degree in English.

Her acting career started at Oxford, where she played Irina in a student production of Three Sisters at the Oxford Playhouse. After graduating, she enrolled at RADA, and while there had her first professional work, playing Sally Bowles in Cabaret at Suffolk’s own Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich. In 1982 she also appeared in her first film, Privileged.

In 1998 she won the Royal Shakespeare Company critics award for Most Promising Newcomer Award.

In 2004, Stubbs’s first play We Happy Few, directed by Trevor Nunn and starring Juliet Stevenson and Marcia Warren, opened at the Gielgud Theatre.

Imogen has written for many newspapers and magazines, including a column in a leading newspaper and many happy years of travel writing. This has taken her all over the world – crossing the mountains in Kyrgyzstan on horseback, traveling across frozen Alaska with The Iditarod, horse surfing the sand dunes in the Atacama desert in Chile, and so much more.

Her extensive and varied TV credits include: D H Lawrence’s The Rainbow, as well as a series regular in the BBC’s Big Kids.

Recent stage credits include: Clybourne Park (Park Theatre); Honour (Park Theatre); The Be All and End All (York Theatre Royal); Things I Know To Be True (Frantic Assembly); Communicating Doors (Menier Chocolate Factory); Elephants (Hampstead Theatre); Alecky Blythe’s Little Revolution (Almeida Theatre); and Strangers On A Train (Gielgud).

For the Royal Shakespeare Company, she appeared in Othello, Two Noble Kinsmen, The Rover, and Richard II.

Film credits include: Jack & Sarah; Twelfth Night; True Colours; Deadline; A Summer Story; and Sense and Sensibility.

 

Booking Information

The Children by Lucy Kirkwood

Friday 10 March to Saturday 25 March 2023

Captioned Performance 22 March 2023

Audio Described Performance 23 March 2023

The Children is sponsored by Chassis Cab.