Award-winning actress Lia Williams is set to star in a revival of Noel Coward’s play The Vortex at Chichester Festival Theatre, as part of their new 2023 season.
Daniel Raggett, nominated for a 2022 Evening Standard Emerging Talent Award, directs this new production in which Florence and Nicky Lancaster are played by real-life mother and son, Lia Williams and Joshua James.
The cast also include Priyanga Burford (Consent, BBC/HBO’s Industry) as Helen.
The Vortex is one of Noel Coward’s first plays and caused a sensation when it first played in London in 1924, making the young Coward a star.
Set in the roaring twenties, in a world in flux, the magnetic Florence Lancaster (Lia Williams) draws people to her like moths to a flame. But when her son Nicky (Joshua James) arrives home from Paris with an unexpected fiancée and a secret, it sets off a chain of events which threatens to pull them all into a maelstrom.
Lia Williams was most recently in the West End in John Gabriel Borkman at The Bridge theatre. Her other multi award-winning roles include Wallis Simpson in The Crown, Dr Cooper in His Dark Materials, and on stage in Mary Stuart (Almeida & West End) with Juliet Stevenson.
Joshua James returns to the Festival Theatre where he appeared in the Young Chekhov trilogy as Nikolai in Platonov and Konstantin in The Seagull – for which he was nominated for an Ian Charleson Award.
The Vortex creative team also includes set design by Joanna Scotcher, costume design by Evie Gurney, lighting design by Zoe Spurr, music and sound design by Giles Thomas, and casting by Lotte Hines CDG.
The Vortex runs in the Festival Theatre in Chichester from 28 April to 20 May 2023.
Read more about Chichester’s new season for 2023
