Eleanor Bron

Eleanor Bron and Mark Gatiss are joining the cast of the Old Vic’s stage version of Almodovar’s All About My Mother. As previously reported, Diana Rigg, Lesley Manville, Charlotte Randle, Joanne Frogatt and Colin Morgan have already been cast in the play, which runs from 25 August prior to an official opening on 4 September.

Bron, who will play the mother of Sister Rosa (a young nun in search of love), was last seen on stage in Howard Brenton’s In Extremis at Shakespeare’s Globe in May, has appeared at the National Theatre in The Miser, The White Devil, The Cherry Orchard, The Real Inspector Hound and The Duchess of Malfi. Other theatre credits include Hamlet (Donmar Warehouse), Dona Rosita The Spinster (Almeida) and Making Noise Quietly (Whitehall). Her film credits include The Beatles’ movie Help!, Alfie, Black Beauty, Iris and Wimbledon. On TV, she has appeared in Fat Friends, Absolutely Fabulous and A Month in the Country, and she has also contributed as a writer to several comedy TV series with John Fortune, John Bird, Michael Frayn and Alan Bennett.

Gatiss, who plays Agrado, a long-lost transsexual friend of Lesley Manville’s character Manuela, is best known as one third of The League of Gentlemen, the multi-award winning theatre and television show which won the South Bank Award for Best Comedy, the BAFTA Award for Best Comedy and the Golden Rose of Montreux. He appeared in the West End with the other members of the League trio in Yasmina Reza’s long-running comedy Art. Film credits include The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse, Match Point, Shaun of the Dead and Bright Young Things. For television, he has recently finished filming Sense and Sensibility and The Wind in the Willows for the BBC. He has written and appeared in the latest series of Dr Who. The Devil in Amber, the sequel to his best-selling period adventure novel The Vesuvius Club, has just been published.

[AD]Completing the company of Tom Cairns’ production are Bradley Freegard, Robert Galas, Lucy-Anne Holmes, Eileen Nicholas, Yvonne O’Grady and Michael Shaeffer.

All About My Mother is booking to 24 November 2007.