Final Three Leads Set for The Woman in White

Martin Crewes, Oliver Darley and Edward Petherbridge will join Michael Crawford, Maria Friedman, Angela Christian and Jill Paice in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White. The new tuner, directed by Trevor Nunn, is set to start performances at the Palace Theatre on August 28 in preparation for a September 15 opening.

Crewes, who will portray Walter Hartwright a role that Trainspotting's Kevin McKidd took in the reading of The Woman in White, played Kaplan in the film Resident Evil. His stage work includes playing Marius in the West End production of Les Misérables. Darley, who is set to appear in The Woman in White as Sir Percival Glyde, has worked extensively at the RSC, appearing in The Alchemist, Romeo and Juliet, The Thebans and Columbus. Edward Petherbridge, a founder member of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre at the Old Vic in 1964 and of the Actors' Company in 1972, has played many roles at the RSC and in the West End, most recently starring in the original company of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He won an Olivier Award for his performance in Strange Interlude, but is most famous for playing Lord Peter Wimsey in a series of BBC Television movies.

Freely adapted from Wilkie Collins's Victorian thriller, The Woman in White centers on a dashing young man Crewes, employed as the art tutor to two devoted sisters Friedman and Paice, who is stranded at a remote railway cutting. Out of the darkness looms a woman, a mysterious figure dressed in white Christian, desperate to share a chilling secret. He and the sisters soon find themselves trapped in a web of betrayal and greed, the victims of a seemingly flawless crime. Together they will need all their resourcefulness and courage to outwit a hugely charismatic and ingenious villain. As the plot twists and turns, low villainy vies with high romance in a world where nothing is as it first appears and where it is impossible to know who to trust. The musical has been adapted for the stage by Charlotte Jones Humble Boy and features music by Lloyd Webber and lyrics by David Zippel.