We can bring you the most fantastic news that James will start alongside Caroline Quentin in ‘By Royal Appointment’ in a play that will run on a UK tour throughout the summer.

The late Queen Elizabeth II was famous for her discretion. She never said anything in public that could ruffle the lightest of feathers. But she had one way of expressing what she really thought – through her wardrobe.

By Royal Appointment is a funny, poignant and celebratory new play about the kind of power that only a Queen can wield – she charms the world through coats and admonishes her family through a carefully chosen hat. But the Queen herself is uninterested in fashion, her look is managed by her Designer, her Milliner and most powerful of all, her Dresser who was a working-class girl who goes from advising the Queen on the colour of her lipsticks to the real power behind the throne. But the Dresser, like all royal favourites is living on borrowed time.

By Royal Appointment is a behind the scenes peek into the world of our most popular monarc and the image she presented to the world. Starring national treasure Anne Reid as The Queen, doyen of stage and screen Caroline Quentin as The Dresser, with Olivier award-winning James Dreyfus as The Milliner and Merchant Ivory and Poldark legend James Wilby as The Designer. The new play is written by Daisy Goodwin who created the hit ITV series Victoria and directed by former Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe, Dominic Dromgoole.

James will play The Designer.

I have added a promotional image and artictle to the gallery of James in his role as Sir Peter Bailey in the upcoming episodes of The Marlow Murder Club on Wednesday 29th March at 8pm and 9pm showimng on U&Drama. The full article is also below.

 

Our very talented Chelsea Allen on tumblr has written a brilliant and in depth character for Maurice Hall.

See a short taster below:

Maurice Hall is brave, so declares his friends at school. ‘A great mistake—he wasn’t brave: he was afraid of the dark. But no one knew this.’

In Edwardian England, Maurice grows up in the suburban upper middle class, with a bright, friendly face, and a good build, although he is not too colossal at games nor at schoolwork. As a boy, he has a distinct sense that he’s being lied to, when his teacher, drawing diagrams on the sand, explains to him the sacrosanct matter of sex. While at his next school, he moves in a most tormenting darkness. What his subconscious hints at makes him believe it’s a lone curse that’s befallen him: a dream, wherein he plays football with a naked George, once a garden boy for the Halls. And a second dream, which speaks to him of a friend whom he does not find in waking. To conceal his mind full of carnal thoughts—his mind which he believes to be most vile, to present himself as a rather empty creature, he’s unkind to his sisters and, because he believes school necessitates it, unkind to his schoolfellows, even the boys therein around whom ‘he would laugh loudly, talk absurdly, and be unable to work.’

Once in Cambridge however, Maurice discovers that in leading others to see he’s dimensionless, he’s been deceiving himself about their nature. People are alive, he sees, with real insides, not vile as his own but insides all the same. And now he softens. It was against his nature to be cruel. He finds Risley, his senior, to be a man with an eccentric inside. Upon meeting him, Maurice, still in undiminished, inarticulable darkness, feels not a want of him as a friend, but that he might be able to help him in some way. And it is in search of him one evening that Maurice Hall meets Clive Durham, and finds himself dwarfed by an intellect which bares his own pretenses, thereby igniting both admiration and self-doubt. Over the terms, he feels the growing intimacy of their friendship, and, to impress Clive, bluffs about Christ’s doctrines to demonstrate that he thinks too. When Clive challenges his beliefs, his defense falls short, but he scarcely minds it, as all this successfully lets Clive maintain an interest in him. The reason why he cares for this interest Maurice desists asking himself. But he does face it, in a most agonizing revelation showing him the beauty he could have had, after Clive has professed his love for him, and he’s acted coldly: ‘Durham! a rotten notion really—’. He faces that he loves, has always loved, men.

For the rest click here

For the Maurice movie page click here

I have created the COTTON MARY page here including 2 video clips and over 900 screencaps to the gallery of James in this role.