DAVID TENNANT AND CATHERINE TATE TO STAR IN MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

Opening at Wyndham’s Theatre on Wednesday 1 June with previews from Monday 16 May and booking until Saturday 3 September 2011, Much Ado About Nothing is presented in the West End by Sonia Friedman Productions. Booking for the production opens today (8 January 2011) and further casting will be announced shortly.

Two young lovers Claudio and Hero are to be married imminently but the devious scheming of a resentful Prince looks set to thwart the nuptials. Meanwhile, marriage seems inconceivable for reluctant lovers Beatrice (Catherine Tate) and Benedick (David Tennant) whose endless witty sparring threatens to keep them apart forever.

David Tennant has worked extensively in theatre, television and film winning numerous awards for his work including the Critics' Circle Award for Best Shakespearean Performance and the National Television Award’s Outstanding Drama Performance. For the Royal Shakespeare Company his credits include As You Like It, The Herbal Bed, The Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and more recently, Love’s Labour’s Lost and the title role in Hamlet. His film credits include LA Without a Map, Bright Young Things, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, St Trinian’s II: The Legend of Fritton’s Gold and the forthcoming Fright Night and The Decoy Bride. On television he is best known for playing the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in the BBC’s classic series Doctor Who. He has most recently been seen playing the title character in the BBC’s Single Father and next year he will play Jimmy Murphy in BBC television’s United.

Multi award-winning Catherine Tate can currently be seen in Alan Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings at the National Theatre. She was last in the West End in David Eldridge’s Under the Blue Sky, produced by Sonia Friedman Productions. Her other theatre credits include Neil LaBute's Some Girls at the Gielgud Theatre, The Exonerated at Riverside Studios, A Servant to Two Masters for the Royal Shakespeare Company and The Prince's Play and The Way of the World for the National Theatre. After playing Donna Noble opposite David Tennant in the BBC’s Doctor Who Christmas Special, Tate went on to reprise the role of the Doctor’s companion in the fourth series. Her acclaimed television sketch show The Catherine Tate Show has seen three hugely successful series on the BBC while her other television credits include Little Crackers, Nan’s Christmas Carol, The Bad Mother’s Handbook, Wild West and Big Train. Her film credits include The Monte Carlo Story, Gulliver’s Travels, Love and Other Disasters, Mrs Ratcliffe’s Revolution, Starter for Ten, Sixty Six and Scenes of a Sexual Nature.

Josie Rourke is Artistic Director of the Bush Theatre where her productions include How to Curse, Tinderbox and 2000 Feet Away. Previously she was Associate Director of Sheffield Theatres where she directed World Music, The Unthinkable, Much Ado About Nothing, The Long and the Short and the Tall and Kick for Touch. As a freelance director her work includes Men Should Weep, which is currently playing in repertoire at the National Theatre, Crazyblackmuthfuckin’self and Loyal Women for the Royal Court, My Dad’s a Birdman for the Young Vic, Believe What You Will and King John for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the 24 Hour Plays for the Old Vic and Frame 312, World Music and The Cryptogram for the Donmar Warehouse. In 2009 she directed Twelfth Night for the Chicago Shakespeare Company.

Image from Doctor Who (C) BBC Worldwide.