Play name
The Audience
By Peter Morgan
Director and Contact Details
Matt Gould
Phone number: 07970 100502
Playing dates
Thursday 10th September to Saturday 18th September (first Thursday is a private Charity show; not Sunday 13th September; matinee Saturday 12th September)
Get-in and Strike
16th August; 19th September
Venue
BLT Main House
Audition Date
2:30pm Sunday February 7th 2027
Rehearsals
Will Start mid-June.
Given the nature of the play, we will be able to work around the availability of the various Prime Ministers, provided that everyone is generally available for the last 2.5 weeks before the show. Obviously the actress playing the Queen will need very good availability – but holidays, pre-known absences can of course be worked into the rehearsal schedule.
About the play
The Audience imagines the private weekly meetings between Queen Elizabeth II and successive Prime Ministers—from Churchill to Cameron—conversations that history never recorded. Politicians come and go; the Queen remains the constant, advising, listening, gently teasing, and occasionally revealing the woman behind the crown.
Warm, witty and sharply observed, the play offers both a fascinating window onto modern British history and a tour-de-force role for the actress playing the Queen across more than sixty years of her reign – this is the play that inspired the hit TV show “The Crown”.
The play is a sequence of two-handers, in non-chronological order, between the Queen and various of her Prime Ministers – Major, Churchill, Wilson, Brown, Eden, Blair, Cameron, Thatcher and Callaghan. Brilliant individual scenes for each of the prime ministers, and a strong supporting cast required.
Time
1950’s – 2010’s
Location
The audience chamber, Buckingham Palace and the private sitting room, Balmoral Castle
Style and Genre
Contemporary historical drama with strong comedic and biographical elements: a series of intimate, imagined two-hander conversations (episodic and non-chronological), blending sharp political insight, dry British wit, quiet pathos, and character study; intelligent, affectionate, and lightly satirical.
It is essentially a series of intimate, imagined two-hander conversations (episodic and non-chronological), blending sharp political insight, dry British wit, quiet pathos, and character study.
Characters
QUEEN ELIZABETH II The central figure. Constant, shrewd, privately humorous and occasionally vulnerable. Ages from her mid-20s (newly crowned) through to her 80s across the play. Numerous quick costume and wig changes. Playing age: 25–85
WINSTON CHURCHILL The elderly, formidable first Prime Minister the young Queen encounters. Bluff, paternal, and occasionally condescending. Playing age: 75–85
SIR ANTHONY EDEN Elegant but strained Conservative Prime Minister, dealing with the Suez Crisis. Playing age: 55–65
HAROLD WILSON Labour Prime Minister and one of the Queen’s favourites. Warm, irreverent, working-class, and later vulnerable. Playing age: 45–65
MARGARET THATCHER The Iron Lady. Formidable, ideologically driven, and locked in a cool, tense relationship with the Queen. Playing age: 50–65
JOHN MAJOR Awkward, self-doubting Conservative Prime Minister who finds unexpected empathy from the Queen. Playing age: 45–55
GORDON BROWN Intense, somewhat awkward Labour Prime Minister, marked by insecurity and a sense of duty. Playing age: 50–60
DAVID CAMERON Youthful, polished Conservative Prime Minister. Playing age: 40–50
YOUNG ELIZABETH The Queen as a child/adolescent. Appears in reflective scenes with her older self, revealing early doubts and the weight of duty. Playing age: 11–14
THE EQUERRY The Queen’s loyal, formal attendant and the play’s occasional narrator. Observant, dry, and quietly authoritative. Playing age: 35–65
Other roles will be played by members of the cast
Audition pieces
To follow