Cast Set for 70th Birthday Celebrations at Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre

The full cast has been announced for the SJT’s 70th Birthday Party, hosted by Laura Doddington on Sunday 13 July.

They are: Valerie Antwi, Andy Cryer, Christopher Godwin, Tayla Kovacevic-Ebong, Annie Kirkman, Jacky Naylor, Tamzin Outhwaite and Charlie Ryan. They’ve all appeared in shows at the SJT over the years.

Christopher Godwin first joined the SJT in 1971 to play Leonard in Time and Time Again and has returned many times, becoming one of the very few actors to have performed at all three of the theatre’s homes.

Andy Cryer was born and brought up in Scarborough and started his professional career here as a 14-year-old in 1983, playing the title role in The Winslow Boy. He has performed at the SJT many times, most recently in Alan Ayckbourn’s Constant Companions in 2023.

Tamzin Outhwaite was in the chorus of They’re Playing Our Song at the SJT in 1996, returning in 1997 for a revival of Ayckbourn’s Absent Friends. Since then, she’s become one of the most familiar faces on British TV.

Jacky Naylor first appeared here in John Godber’s Lost and Found back in 2012; last year, she played Edna Whelan in The Whitby Rebels.

Tayla Kovacevic-Ebong helped the theatre to re-open after Covid – he was in Alan Ayckbourn’s 2021 show, The Girl Next Door, the SJT’s first full production post-pandemic.

Valerie Antwi was the ‘material girl’ in the first of the SJT’s off-the-wall adaptations of Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors (more or less), co-produced with Shakespeare North Playhouse in 2023.

Annie Kirkman joined the SJT company in 2023 for Beauty and the Beast and has since been seen in Dracula: The Bloody Truth, Love’s Labour’s Lost (more or less) and John Godber’s Perfect Pitch.

Charlie Ryan was also in the SJT’s UK Theatre Award-winning Christmas show, Beauty and the Beast in 2023.

Host Laura Doddington performed regularly at the SJT between 2004 and 2012.

At the afternoon event on Sunday 13 July, they will perform script-in-hand extracts from some of theatre’s favourite plays from its seven decades. They’ll be directed by the SJT’s Associate Director, Chantell Walker.

On 14 July 1955, an ambitious young theatrical pioneer called Stephen Joseph opened a revolutionary new theatre on the first floor of Scarborough Library.

The Library Theatre was the first in-the-round theatre in the UK in modern times – it’s since been replicated worldwide. Theatregoers in Scarborough and beyond embraced the new format, and the ‘temporary’ Library Theatre hosted performances until 1976, when it moved to another – also ‘temporary’! – home in a former school at the town’s Westwood.

That ran until 1996, when the theatre found its final home in Scarborough’s former Odeon Cinema. The Stephen Joseph Theatre is now a cultural beacon on the Yorkshire coast, attracting audiences from across the globe.

The SJT is a Registered Charity (253606). All money raised at this event will go towards its New Work Fund, helping it to put brand new work on our stages and nurture new talent, which were core principles of its founder, Stephen Joseph.