Stefan Dennis and George Rainsford head the seven-strong company announced for The King’s Speech, which opens at the Barn Theatre in Cirencester on 9 October before a UK tour running from January to July 2027.
Stefan Dennis, who played Paul Robinson in Neighbours across the forty years the series was on air, will take the role of the Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue in The King’s Speech, opposite George Rainsford as Bertie, King George VI. The Barn Theatre in Cirencester, working with Tiny Giant Entertainment, has named the full company for a production that opens in the Cotswolds on Friday 9 October and then spends the first half of 2027 on the road.
Rosanna Miles, who was Fiona in Haywire at the Barn last year, plays Queen Elizabeth. Lucy Bromilow, seen at the Old Vic in Glengarry Glen Ross and Mary Page Marlowe, doubles as Myrtle Logue and Wallis Simpson, and Tim Hudson takes both King George V and Winston Churchill. Ian Kirkby, who played Lewis Mumford alongside Ralph Fiennes in Straight Line Crazy at the Bridge, is Archbishop Cosmo Lang, and Mark Hammersley — an original cast member of Stranger Things: The First Shadow — plays David, later King Edward VIII, as well as Stanley Baldwin. Both Rainsford and Kirkby come to the production from Dear England at the National Theatre.
Loveday Ingram directs, following her recent touring productions of The Girl on the Train and Little Women. Set and costume design is by Adam Wiltshire, with lighting by Hector Murray, music and sound design by Elizabeth Purnell and casting by Marc Frankum.
The play is by David Seidler, who wrote the 2010 screenplay and won an Academy Award for it. Seidler developed a stammer as a boy after being sent from London to the United States during the war, and took the stuttering king as a private role model long before he wrote about him; the stage version has played the West End, toured Britain and the United States and been produced in nine other languages. He died in 2024.
The story sits in the months around the abdication, with a war coming and a reluctant second son suddenly required to speak for the country over the wireless. Bertie’s family turn to Logue, whose methods owe nothing to royal protocol, and the working relationship between the two men becomes something closer to a friendship. Age guidance is 12+.
After the Cirencester run, which plays 9 October - 7 November 2026, the tour opens at the Oxford Playhouse on Wednesday 13 January 2027 and visits twenty-five towns and cities before finishing at Malvern in July. We reported the tour announcement in July, when the dates were confirmed but the casting was not.
- 9 October - 7 November 2026: Barn Theatre, Cirencester
- From 13 January 2027: Oxford Playhouse, Oxford
- w/c 18 January 2027: Belgrade Theatre, Coventry
- w/c 25 January 2027: Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham
- w/c 1 February 2027: Theatr Clwyd
- w/c 8 February 2027: Darlington Hippodrome, Darlington
- w/c 15 February 2027: Blackpool Grand, Blackpool
- w/c 22 February 2027: Theatre Royal, Bath
- w/c 1 March 2027: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford
- w/c 8 March 2027: His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen
- w/c 15 March 2027: Nottingham Playhouse, Nottingham
- w/c 22 March 2027: Theatre Royal Windsor, Windsor
- w/c 29 March 2027: Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne
- w/c 5 April 2027: Curve, Leicester
- w/c 12 April 2027: Churchill Theatre, Bromley
- w/c 19 April 2027: Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton
- w/c 26 April 2027: Palace Theatre, Southend
- w/c 3 May 2027: Salisbury Playhouse, Salisbury
- w/c 10 May 2027: Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield
- w/c 17 May 2027: Theatre Royal Winchester, Winchester
- w/c 24 May 2027: Royal & Derngate, Northampton
- w/c 31 May 2027: The Sands Centre, Carlisle
- w/c 7 June 2027: Ipswich Regent Theatre, Ipswich
- w/c 14 June 2027: Arts Theatre, Cambridge
- w/c 21 June 2027: Liverpool Playhouse, Liverpool
- w/c 28 June 2027: Malvern Theatres, Malvern
Most dates are on sale now through the theatres themselves, with Theatr Clwyd and the Sheffield week still to follow. The production is presented by arrangement with Music Theatre International.
