Casting Announced For JUST TO GET MARRIED at Finborough Theatre

The first London production in over a hundred years of Just To Get Married, a romantic comedy by renowned suffragette Cicely Hamilton opens at the Finborough Theatre for a four week limited season on Tuesday, 25 July 2017.

Approaching her 30th birthday in early 20th Century England, the clever and poor Georgiana Vicary is waiting for the handsome but shy Adam Lankester to propose to her.

Her friends expect her to get married, her adoptive parents expect it and more importantly, she expects it of herself - but will her conscience allow it?

From a time when marriage was a socio-economic - rather than just a romantic - decision, Just to Get Married asks how we can have a marriage of equals when the genders are unequal.

Written by actress, journalist, playwright and suffragette Cicely Hamilton, and first produced at the Little Theatre in London in 1910, Just to Get Married was last produced in the UK at Birmingham Rep in 1918, and is directed by Melissa Dunne, founder of the acclaimed gender blind play festival XY.

Playwright Cicely Hamilton (1872-1952) co-founded the Women Writers' Suffrage League and supplied the lyrics for The March of the Women, the anthem of Mrs Pankhurst's Women's Social and Political Union. Known for her novel and play Diana of Dobson's (1908), revived at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, in 2007, her polemic Marriage as a Trade (1909), and her play How The Vote Was Won (rediscovered at the Finborough Theatre in 2003), Hamilton also wrote A Pageant of Great Women, a highly successful women's suffrage play based on the ideas of her friend, the theatre director Edith Craig. During the First World War, Hamilton joined the army as an auxiliary nurse. After the war, she worked extensively as a freelance journalist writing about issues such as birth control.

Director Melissa Dunne is a theatre director, writer and dramaturg. She is Artistic Director of Papercut Theatre and has directed work in venues as diverse as Theatre503, Arcola Theatre, the Houses of Parliament and the Royal Festival Hall. Direction includes I'm Not Jesus Christ (Theatre N16, supported by the Romanian Cultural Institute), I Still Get Excited When I See A Ladybird (Theatre503), Extraction (Etcetera Theatre) and The Space Between My Head and My Body (Theatre503 and Edinburgh Festival). She founded and continues to creatively manage the acclaimed XY playwriting festival which has been produced at Hackney Showroom, Latitude Festival, Pleasance Edinburgh and Theatre503. She has read scripts for the literary departments of the National Theatre, Bush Theatre, the Verity Bargate Award and Soho Theatre. She is also a Visiting Lecturer at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

The cast:
Tania Amsel | Frances Melliship
Trained at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Theatre includes Finishing Touches (Barbican Centre), Kate's Expectations and Never Have I Ever (Arcola Theatre), Flood (National Youth Theatre) and Whistle Down the Wind (National Youth Music Theatre).
Film includes Exchange And Mart.
Television includes Waterloo Road, Dawn of the Deaf and Shieldinch Nights.

Nicola Blackman | Lady Catherine Grayle
Trained at Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Theatre includes The Lion King (Lyceum Theatre), Animal Farm, Measure for Measure and Pied Piper (National Theatre), Shutters (3 American Plays) (Park Theatre), Elegies (Criterion Theatre), Twelfth Night, Tiger Tale and The Count of Monte Cristo (Nuffield Theatre, Southampton), Snakes and Ladders (Arcola Theatre and National Tour), Babe: The Sheep Pig (Polka Theatre and UK Tour), Destry Rides Again (Donmar Warehouse) and Comedy of Errors (West Yorkshire Playhouse).
Film includes The Savage and Live and Let Die.
Television includes Madam Manhattan, Casualty, Killer Net, The Bill, Fathers and Families, Angels, Birds of a Feather and Us Girls.

Joanne Ferguson | Mrs Macartney
Trained at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
Theatre includes The Play That Goes Wrong (Duchess Theatre), Wait (Arcola Theatre), Blindness (Theatre503), Invisible Thread (Lakeside Theatre) and Failed States (Latitude Festival).
Film includes Bridge Over Blue and Resurrecting the Streetwalker.
Radio includes Severed Threads and The Danny Baker Show.

Lauren Fitzpatrick | Bertha Grayle
Trained at Guildford School of Acting.
Theatre includes The Play List, Presenting: I Don't Know Where I Am and Drinking Concrete: The Concept Album (Royal Court Theatre), Club Life (Theatre Royal Stratford East) and Slick (National Youth Theatre).
Film includes Northern Soul.
Television includes Tracy Ullman's Show.

Stuart Nunn | Footman/Dobbins
Trained at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
Theatre includes Elegies for Angels, Punks And Raging Queens (Charing Cross Theatre), The Secret Garden (Ambassadors Theatre), The Last Ambulance (Sherman Theatre and Gate Theatre), Hobson's Choice (Theatre Royal Bath and Vaudeville Theatre), Little Eyolf - Young Friends Tour (Almeida Theatre), and Caged (Old Red Lion Theatre).
Radio includes BBC Carleton Hobbs Radio Competition

Jonny McPherson | Adam Lankester
Trained at Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art.
Theatre includes The Robbers (Theatre Royal Bath), Toad (Southwark Playhouse), It Falls (Theatre 503), Hamlet, Thebes, Blood Wedding and Strindberg's Apartment (New Diorama Theatre), The 39 Steps and Fallen Angels (Theatre by the Lake, Keswick) and The End of Longing (Playhouse Theatre).
Film includes Inhabit and Night Owls.
Television includes Emmerdale, Countdown to Revolution, and 'Til Death.

Philippa Quinn | Georgiana Vicary
Trained at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Theatre includes Because We Want To (Rose Theatre, Bankside), Pride and Prejudice, Bard on Board (National Tour), Writers Block (BAC), Random Acts of Kindness (Old Red Lion Theatre and The White Horse), Breathing Space (Courtyard Theatre) and Block 59 (Glastonbury Festival).

Simon Rhodes | Sir Theodore Grayle
Productions at the Finborough Theatre include Laburnum Grove and Cornelius which transferred to 59E59 Theaters, New York City.
Theatre includes No Man's Land (Wyndham's Theatre and UK Tour), A Pit Of Clay and Styx (Site Specific), Billy Chickens Is A Psychopath Superstar (Theatre503 at Latitude Festival), Volpone (The Rose Lipman Building), Venice Preserv'd (Site Specific), Mark Watson's The Hotel (Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh Festival), Accomplice (Menier Chocolate Factory), Peace, The Bacchae, The Persians (Cyprus Tour), The Plebeians Rehearse The Uprising (Arcola Theatre) and Julius Caesar (Barbican Theatre).
Film includes The World We Knew, The Sky In Bloom and Screwed.

Joshua Riley | Tod Grayle
Trained at The BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology.
Theatre includes Richard III (Almeida Theatre and Ulysses Festival, Croatia), As You Like It (Brighton Festival) and WWI Performance Project (National Youth Theatre).
Film includes Richard III, A Silent Voice and Homeless Truths.
Television includes Casualty and Doctors.

Book online at www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk
Tuesday, 25 July- Saturday, 19 August 2017
Prices until 6 August 2017 - Tickets £16, £14 concessions, except Tuesday evenings £14 all seats, and Friday and Saturday evenings £16 all seats. Previews (25 and 26 July) £12 all seats.
£10 tickets for Under 30's for performances from Tuesday to Sunday of the first week when booked online only.
£12 tickets for residents of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea on Saturday, 29 July 2017 when booked online only.
Prices from 8 August 2017- Tickets £18, £16 concessions, except Tuesday evenings £16 all seats, and Friday and Saturday evenings £18 all seats.
Group Bookings - 1 free ticket for every 10 tickets booked.
Approximate running time: 2 hours including one interval.