The first production photos from Some Woman are out, showing Anne-Marie Duff as a woman nobody notices until the day she decides she has kept her head down long enough, in Helen Edmundson's new play at the National Theatre's Dorfman.
A woman in a pale trench coat, hair flung across her face, alone against a wall of grey stone panels. That is Anne-Marie Duff as Julie in the first production photos from Some Woman, Helen Edmundson's new play at the National Theatre, taken by Ellie Kurttz.
Julie Robson has spent years going unseen, by her colleagues and by her own family. Then an incident on a railway platform goes badly wrong, every eye in the place swings towards her, and something in her will not settle back down. What follows is one ordinary woman squaring up to forces far larger than herself, and refusing to lower her voice when everyone around her would prefer she did.
The frames cut between two very different spaces. One is a stark, almost empty room boxed in by blue-edged panels, where Duff sits at a table opposite Ioanna Kimbook. The other is a lived-in family kitchen, where Grace Doherty folds her arms against a pointed finger from Tobi King-Bakare. Elsewhere Hannah Onslow and Doherty are caught in a tense clinch, and Stephen Wight pauses mid-gesture in a padded gilet.
Duff leads a company of nine. Doherty plays Ginny, Kimbook doubles as Celia and DC Healy, King-Bakare is Nathan, Tom McCall is DS Woods, Daniel Millar is Mr Dunster, Onslow is Kate, Geoffrey Streatfeild is Richard and Wight is Mr Blake.
Blanche McIntyre directs. Robert Jones designs the set and costumes, with lighting by Natasha Chivers, movement by Lucie Pankhurst, sound by Ben and Max Ringham and music by Therese Strasser. Casting is by Martin Poile CDG. The play holds an Edgerton Foundation New Play Award and has backing from the Huo Family Foundation.
It plays straight through in about an hour and 45 minutes, with no interval, and latecomers may not be admitted. Four performances start early, at 6.30pm: Thursday 22 October, Tuesday 3 November, Thursday 12 November and Tuesday 17 November. The production contains strong and misogynistic language, and references to violence, sexual assault, suicide, disordered eating and mental illness.
Some Woman is booking now at the Dorfman Theatre, where previews began on Wednesday 7 October 2026, and runs until Saturday 21 November 2026.
