STAGE and screen actress Sophie Ward has been revealed as the lead in the brand new stage production of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, coming to the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham in October.

Touring Consortium Theatre Company and Royal & Derngate Northampton’s are bringing the show to Cheltenham as part of a nine date tour across the country.

Brave New World, widely considered to be one of the finest and most prophetic dystopian novels of the twentieth century, bursts into life on stage in an adaptation by award-winning playwright Dawn King.

It is directed by James Dacre and designed by Naomi Dawson, with an original new music by British band These New Puritans.

Sophie Ward will star as ‘Margaret Mond – the Regional World Controller for Western Europe’, which in Huxley’s novel is a male character.

Dawn King said, “I took this decision primarily because as a feminist, I wanted to increase the gender equality of the show. I also felt that having a female world controller of Western Europe is more representative of our world today, and of a world of the future.

“In the novel the character is called ‘Mustapha Mond’, but in my adaptation I chose the name Margaret, for its obvious allusions. I think Sophie Ward is a great choice to play the role because ‘Mond’ is a person who has had to make hard decisions, has a strong sense of her own personal morality, and has real steely authority – qualities I think Sophie will accentuate.”

Sophie Ward’s extensive screen credits include series regular roles in Land Girls, Heartbeat and Holby City.

She has appeared in TV dramas Dinotopia, A Dark Adapted Eye (opposite Helena Bonham Carter), A Village Affair and Secret State, and films including Jane Eyre, Book of Blood, Out of Bounds, Crime and Punishment, Wuthering Heights, and Young Sherlock Holmes.

Brave New World is the fifth Touring Consortium Theatre Company production funded by the Arts Council of England‘s Strategic Touring Programme, and the third co-production with Royal & Derngate, Northampton.

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