Broadway BUZZ

In the late 1970’s, Simon Jones recorded the first of the BBC Radio 4 series, playing the soon-to-be iconic Arthur Dent in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. He went on with this character in the later radio series, the BBC TV series, and a UK stage show tour, in 2012 and 2013. He also played Bridey in Granada TV’s landmark series Brideshead Revisited and Sir Walter Raleigh in Blackadder. His Broadway debut was in 1984, in The Real Thing (directed by Mike Nichols) and he went on to star in Benefactors (helmed by Michael Blakemore), Getting Marr, ied Private Lives (opposite Joan Collins), The Real Inspector Hound/The 15-Minute Hamlet, School for Scandal, The Herbal Bed, Ring Round the Moon, Waiting in the Wings (with Lauren Bacall and Rosemary Harris), and Blithe Spirit with Angela Lansbury on Broadway, (London’s West End, and a tour of North America). Latest was with Mark Rylance in Farinelli and the King. Simon’s an award-winning narrator of audio books, having recorded more than 65 in the USA. His last four: Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince, Agatha Christie’s The Secret of Chimneys, Philip Goodrich’s Somersett and Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land were all given AudioFile Magazines Earphones Awards, and he has won five Audies. For 12 years he was co-artistic director of the Off-Broadway TACT (The Actors Company Theatre), and appeared in Home, The Cocktail Party and Long Island Sound. Feature films include: Miracle on 34th Street, Twelve Monkeys, Brazil, Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, Privates On Parade and The Devil’s Own. He joined the cast of Downton Abbey for the movie, playing King George V, and for the same team played the part of Bannister, the butler in the new ten-part Julian Fellowes HBO Series The Gilded Age which is expected to air in early 2022.