Mark Gatiss To Play King Charles I in Hampstead Theatre's 55 DAYS

Hampstead Theatre is delighted to announce that Mark Gatiss will play King Charles 1 in the premiere of 55 Days, Howard Brenton's new play about the events leading up to the only military coup in British history.

A Hampstead Theatre commission, 55 Days will be directed by Howard Davis. It will be at Hampstead Theatre from 18 October to 24 November 2012.

The political upheaval of the mid-seventeenth century has no parallel in English history. In these dangerous and dramatic times, in a country exhausted by Civil War, the great men of the day were trying to think the unthinkable – to create a country without a king. With Charles 1 refusing to compromise, Oliver Cromwell struggled to invent a political future for his country as he presided over the death of medieval England and the birth of the modern state.

Mark Gatiss has recently been on stage at The Donmar Warehouse in The Recruiting Officer, at The National Theatre in Season's Greetings and All About My Mother at the Old Vic. On television he has played Mycroft Holmes in the BBC's cult Sherlock, and has major roles in The Crimson Petal and The White, Being Human, Worried About The Boy and George Gently. Film includes Match Point directed by Woody Allen, and Bamber Gascoigne's Starter for Ten and Shaun of the Dead. As a novelist and screenwriter Mark Gatiss' work includes episodes of Sherlock, several Dr Who stories, League of Gentlemen books, three Lucifer Box novels and a biography of James Whale.

55 Days is part of Hampstead Theatre's autumn season which also includes David Hare's The Judas Kiss directed by Neil Armfield and starring Rupert Everett and Freddie Fox, and the premiere of Sarah Wooley's Old Money directed by Robin Lefevre and starring Maureen Lipman and Tracy Ann Oberman.